The CEO behind this season’s miracle in Belgian football: “It was not straightforward to pick Union”
Alamy
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise have been the talk of the town in Belgium and beyond, leading the table on their return to the topflight after 48 years. With the regular season at end, Union enjoy a three-point advantage over Club Brugge before the playoffs.
In order to grow revenue, owners Tony Bloom and Alex Muzio plan to build one of Europe’s greenest stadiums for a price tag of 70 million euros.
Why it matters: Belgium’s most successful club before World War I, Union was almost relegated to the amateur division in 2013.
The perspective: In European football, it is all about bigger, better and billions, but Union have shown that you can succeed with clever planning and limited resources.
19 April 2022 - 2:59 PM
Ever so often, football results have a tendency to upend all dogmas of the game - as well as one’s own knowledge about it. Think Leicester City in 2016. Think Union anno 2022. Conveniently, those success stories are cast as fairy tales, but that is often a misnomer.
After a 48-year exile in the lower divisions of the Belgian football pyramid, the club with
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