Runaway Belgian League Leaders Union Saint-Gilloise Looking To Recapture Former Glories

The runaway leaders are looking to become champions for the first time since 1935
13:05, 25 Jan 2022

If surprise runaway leaders Union Saint-Gilloise do manage to win the Belgian Jupiler Pro League title this season after being promoted to the top flight only last summer, it will be the 12th time they have been crowned national champions – but astonishingly the first occasion since 1935. 

This still makes them the third-most successful club side in the country – even if there is hardly anyone alive who remembers the glory years. And the club from a Brussels suburb barely a stone’s throw from far more illustrious near-neighbours Anderlecht are set for arguably the biggest week of their first season back in the big time for 48 years to date. 

The Belgium post-season title play-offs for those finishing in the top four would as things stand in late January feature Club Brugge, Antwerp, the Vincent Kompany-managed Anderlecht…and USG, a small club trying to recapture former glories, and one in which Premier League Brighton chairman Tony Bloom took a controlling interest four years ago. 

As the Seagulls’ steady progress from League One through to the top half of the top flight in England suggests, also overseeing the building of the 30,000-capacity Amex in Sussex, Bloom tends to pick more winners than losers – an entrepreneur having made his rumoured £1billion-plus fortune from developing online gambling and gaming sites, property, start-up ventures and a poker sideline. 

Bloom’s friend and business partner Alex Muzio runs things in Brussels, and so far the strategic approach of a data-driven recruitment process allied to rigorous due diligence on incoming players’ characters has paid off handsomely – not least in the cases of strike duo Dante Vanzeir, 23, of Belgium and German Deniz Undav, 25. 

Both were signed in the summer of 2020, Undav plucked from the German third division on a free and the more technically gifted Vanzeir from Genk for an undisclosed fee. The pair plundered 40 goals between them in the 2020-21 promotion season, and it is 32 and counting in Division One so far.  

Undav retains a strong sense of perspective about his and the team’s sudden success, having at the age of 17 left home to play in the German fourth tier on a wage of £120 per week, combining his football training with working eight hours a day in a factory operating a laser machine that “made loads of stuff”. 

He said: “It was hard when I first came to Union as my then fiancée couldn’t come too from Germany due to Covid. I stayed in a hotel and ate really badly with too much fast food and put on weight, but I got rid of all that working very hard last summer. 

“I wasn’t expecting us to have performed quite so well when I arrived, so it has been a good surprise.” 

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Vanzeir, who won his first cap for Belgium against Wales in November, is revelling being part of the strike force with Undav that is sweeping all before it. He said: “We really complement each other and I am better playing with him. He manages to create spaces for me, and I can do the same for him. We each benefit from the qualities of the other. 

“Who is better? It’s hard to say, we have different qualities. He would have problems playing my role, and likewise I wouldn’t know how to do what he does.” 

Operating in a 3-5-2 formation under Felice Mazzu, the style is building up from the back and wingers are deployed to feed the front two. And the small Stade Joseph Marien, with its 9,400 capacity located in the woodlands of Duden Park in the Forest suburb, has become one of the toughest places to get points for the rest of the league. 

Muzio was always ambitious, reflected in the training facilities and infrastructure, and sporting director Chris O’Loughlin takes responsibility for football operations and transfer activity. 

The dramatic 2-1 win over Genk on Sunday January 23rd, earned ultimately with a penalty in the 10th minute of second half stoppage-time showed USG have not only the quality required but also nerves of steel. 

They came under severe and constant pressure in the second half and conceded an equaliser, had a goal disallowed in the 95th minute but still kept going for yet another three points. The irrepressible duo of Undav and Vanzeir made and scored the penalty.  

And there is now a big gap to the rest, and an even bigger one to fifth - with only the top four making it into the final title play-offs. Even if head coach Mazzù might not agree, a play-off spot at the very least seems all but guaranteed. 

Mazzu said on Sunday, desperately trying to keep a lid on spiralling expectations: “I don’t want to talk about the title play-offs. We want to finish in the top eight, given our season to date not to do that would be a disaster.”  

But no one else is setting the bar that low. 

Matchwinner Vanzeir, looking ahead to a huge week with games against fellow title play-offs contenders Club Brugge and Anderlecht, said: “We go into these games without any pressure. Of course we would love to go to Bruges and win on Thursday, but the pressure is all on their shoulders, more so as they dropped points in their last match.  

“We just want to do the best we can. The title play-offs? We’ll do everything to stay at the top of the table to the end of the regular season, but we know nothing is decided yet.” 

USG are 23/10 to beat Club Brugge with Betfred*

*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject To Change 

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