Fan for a Match: Royale Union Saint-Gilloise

By: Daryl | October 2nd, 2009

usg When Bob started The Offside back in August 2006, he had a brilliant feature called Fan for a Match. Basically Bob would pick a team at random, tell Offside readers a little about that team and then support them that weekend. Usually unsuccessfully, as Bob’s support seemed to be something of a curse.

Despite Bob’s bad luck we’re going to bring back the Fan for a Match feature, partly because it’s a fun excuse for us to read up on some lesser known teams, and partly to see if The Offside’s luck has changed any.

For the return of Fan for a Match, I asked Chris to pick a team at random, without knowing anything about them. He chose an absolute beauty as it turns out. For the return of Fan for a Match, The Offside will be supporting Brussels based team Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, of Belgian Third Division B. Read on to learn more about them, as well as a couple of pretty impressive photos of their home at Stade Joseph Marien.

First thing’s first: Royale Union Saint-Gilloise (or RUSG, to save on typing) may be dwelling in the third tier of Belgian football right now, but they have a long and proud history.

RUSG was formed in 1897 and has won no less than eleven Belgian league titles and two Belgian Cups between 1904 and 1935. That’s some serious silverware, and those eleven titles make RUSG the third most successful club in Belgian history, behind only Anderlecht (29 titles) and Club Brugges (13 titles) and just ahead of current champions Standard Liege (10 titles).

Just as impressive, RUSG went 60 matches unbeaten from 1933 to 1935. There was also some European success, as RUSG made the semi-final of the 1958-60 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (pre-cursor to the UEFA Cup) by beating AS Roma 3-1 on aggregate over a two-legged quarterfinal.

Then it all went a bit wrong. In 1963 RUSG were relegated to the Belgian Second division. They bounced back but were soon relegated again, eventually falling as low as the rather ironically titled Belgian Promotion division in 1980, the lowest national division of Belgian football.

A spot of Googling led me to the excellent blog Grounds for Concern, where an English Dulwich Hamlet supporter travels around various football grounds, and takes some pretty impressive photos. I’ve borrowed a couple below to share with you here…

Stained glass window in the main entrance, featuring the RUSG crest.

The rather old (and rather pretty) main stand of RUSG’s Stade Joseph Marien.

…but I highly recommend paying this Grounds for Concern post about RUSG a visit for more photos and a nice write up.

Our new favourite team are currently managed by Italian Roberto Landi, whose career history makes for interesting reading. The 53 year old former goalkeeper played for (amongst others) Siena in Italy, Kaizer Chiefs in South Africa and the New York Cosmos in the old NASL. He has previously managed Livingston FC in Scotland and the Qatar U-21 team. Clearly this is a man who likes collecting airmiles. Landi has given RUSG an Italian flavour too, with the club carrying – according to Wikipieda anyway – six Italians on the playing staff.

Another great thing about RUSG: They have an English langauge official website. How many Belgian Third Division clubs can say that? How many big teams have that? As Chris said: “So that’s the second time they’ve beaten Roma, because Roma doesn’t have one yet.”

RUSG are currently 8th in Belgian Third Division B, a division they need to win in order to guarantee promotion. This Saturday, RUSG are away to 7th placed KSK Hasselt, so have a chance to leapfrog Hasselt with a win. Fingers crossed.

We’ll let you know how it went next week. In the meantime, if you have any teams you’d like to recommend we support as part of Fan for a Match, send an email to tips[at]theoffside[dot]com explaining who we should support and – most importantly – why.