YOUR QUESTION. How did Union, Anderlecht and RWDM become the biggest football clubs in Brussels?
These are heydays for Brussels football. RWDM competed for a place, Anderlecht for the cup and Union, despite the class of Wednesday evening in Bruges, still comes in general conditions for the title. A look back is necessary. About how they became the biggest clubs in the city and again more than ever we can now say, of the country.
BLUE-YELLOW
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise is the oldest of the three. Or the ‘ancienne’, because it is one of the few clubs with a female name. The club has taken a different path from the destroyed one in other areas.
L’Union was founded in 1897, shortly after football had started its rise in Belgium. At that time, mainly the elite played football and Union wanted to get rid of that elitist side. Sport, and football in particular, had to create a connection between players from different classes. To attract boys from lower backgrounds was the first club to pay its players. That was against the rules, football should only be a hobby and not a profession. Union held on, but the club almost won a title, that didn’t stand in the way of its success.
Until the Second World War, Union was the largest club in the country. She became national champion no fewer than eleven times. The heyday is in the interwar period, when the club went unbeaten sixty times in a row between 1934 and 1935. This originated from the nickname Union 60. At that time, 35,000 supporters could come to watch the matches in the beautiful Joseph Marienstadion, a home for the club since 1920.
After the Second World War, things went downhill for the team. In 1949 she stopped playing in the first division for the first time. This trend continued from 1973. For example, Union even played in the fourth division in the eighties. At one point, Union was on the brink of bankruptcy, but the supporters continued to sing faithfully ‘pour leur clubbe’ and did not give up hope.
The persistence wins, because this season Union will finally play in the first division again after 48 years. And how: the club is experiencing its glory days again and is even dreaming of a bigger stadium to receive many more blue-and-yellow singers.
PURPLE-WHITE
With 34 national titles and 9 Belgian cups, RSC Anderlecht is the largest club in Belgium. Original years of its genesis are a long time behind the other Brussels early years.
The club was founded in 1908 by a group of Brussels residents, between pot and pint in the disappeared café Concordia in Anderlecht. Dressed in purple and white, the footballers played on different Brussels fields for a while, but the ambitions were sky high. Less than ten years after its creation, cells moved to the Meirpark, which we now know as the Astridpark. After the First World War, she even got a stadium, which was then called the Emile Versé Stadium.
The ambitions of the club were carried by ambitious presidents, with Théo Verbeeck being the first. Under his rule, Anderlecht made it to the first division in 1921, and the team has never been relegated since 1935.
Constant Vanden Stock made his appearance in the 1960s. He not only wanted the club to reach the Belgian top, but also to make it shine in European football. That originated in the 1970s. Thinking big calls for sitting big and in the 1980s the stadium was converted and given the allure of one of the most modern stadiums in Europe, with the name of Constant Vanden Stock.
The place is now called differently, there are other presidents in the most suitable places, but the ambitious is in the DNA of ‘les Mauves’, and the victory counter is far from reaching its maximum.
RED-WHITE-BLACK
In full it is Racing White Daring Molenbeek, because RWDM is an amalgamation of Racing Club Brussels, White Star – who already formed Racing White together – and Daring Molenbeek.
It would be an honor to tell a little more about each of these clubs, because each contribute in its own way to the Brussels football history. But together they already had their heyday in the 1970s, when the club became national champion in 1975 and played European.
But over the years, the team dropped out of the higher football classes and had a hard time financially, resulting in bankruptcy in 2002. In the years that followed, there were various kinds of things to revive the club, including lender Johan Vermeersch in 2012, but also that project a year later.
Current chairman Thierry Dailly found, with the right supporters, think the formula to bring RWDM back to life. In seven years, the team, which again started from scratch in the fourth division, climbed to second. This year it just missed the first division after a lost jump-off against Seraing.
In addition to the Edmond Machtens Stadium, different Molenbeek ketjes play in the youth teams every day, which hopefully will also ensure the success of this third Brussels pride in the future.
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