Belgium: K. Rupel Boom F.C

Episode 1: Welcome to Belgium, small but complicated!!

Everyone can name a Belgian player lately without any hesitation. Think of Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, Youri Tielemans, Yannick Carrasco, Eden and Thorgan Hazard or Thibaut Courtois. But how much do you know about football in Belgium?

Not much? Okay no worries. Let me help you out, but be warned the Belgian footballing system is to say the least a bit complicated. The Belgian football pyramid looks as follows.

The Jupiler Pro League.

18 teams who play 34 games. After the regular season as we call it we look at the league table and take the first four teams of the league, these will be placed in Play-Off 1 or the champions round. Their total amount of points will be divided in half and play 8 games amongst each other. The one on top of those 4 after these 8 games is crowned champion and will go into the Champions path play off of the Champions League. The second one in the league (the vice champion) will play in the League path second qualification round of the Champions League. The third one in that play off will play in the play off of the Europa League. The number 4 will play versus the winner of Play Off 2 and the winner of that game will play in the third qualification round of the Europa Conference League.

Play off 2 consists of the teams that finished 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th in the regular season. Their points are also divided in half and they play 8 games. The winner of this play off plays against the fourth team of Play Off 1 with a ticket for the third qualification round in the Conference League at stake.

Since the bottom 3 relegate to the challenger Pro League it is a bit weird but the teams ending 9th to 18th stop playing football after the regular season, while the top 8 of the division continue.

The record champion of Belgium is RSC Anderlecht with 34 titles on their palmares. Last season's champion is KV Club Brugge who took their 18th title and therefore is the second most successful club of the country.

The bottom 3 of the division are relegated into the Challenger Pro League.

Last season there was only one team relegated: K. Beerschot VA


The Crocky Cup

This is the Belgian Cup. Every team playing in the national divisions of the country plays in the cup with the top 8 of the provincial cups. Belgium has 10 provinces, the final 8 of each of those local cups will play in the Crocky cup the season after they reached that provincial cup.

The winner of the Crocky Cup will play in the play off round of the Europa League. Last season's winner was KAA Gent. Record cup holder in Belgium is KV Club Brugge who won the cup 11 times. The final is played in the Koning Boudewijnstadion in Brussels which used to be called Het Heysel Stadion, which most of you will now because of the Heysel drama in May of 1985 in the Europacup 1 final between Juventus and Liverpool where 93 deaths and over 600 injured people marked a black page in world football history.

The Challenger Pro League

This is the second tier of Belgian football and saw some changes. Until last season only 8 teams played in this division. This season there will be 12 teams in the Challenger Pro League.
8 teams will compete with 4 youth formations of the topclubs. The four Under 23 teams competing in this league are Club NXT (Club Brugge) RSCA Futures (RSC Anderlecht), Jong Genk (KRC Genk) and SL16 (Standard de Liege).

After 22 games the league will be divided in two groups. The champions round group with the top 6 of the league and the relegation group with the bottom 6 of the league.

The champions group will play 10 games and only the champion is promoted to the Pro League. This is because starting in the 23-24 season the Jupiler Pro League will consist of only 16 teams.

The bottom six will play a relegation group where they play 10 games and only the last one in the group will relegate into the First Amateur Division.

The champion of last season in the Challenger Pro League was KVC Westerlo. The team that went down to the First Amateur Division was URSL Visé.

First Amateur Division

20 clubs existing of 16 regular teams + four U23 squads, the U23 squads being: Jong AA Gent (KAA Gent), OHL U23 (OHL or Oud Heverlee Leuven), Young Reds (R. Antwerp FC) and Zebre Elites (RSC Charleroi). 38 games with the top 3 promoting towards the Challenger Pro League and the bottom 3 relegating towards the 2nd Amateur division. The number 17 in the league playing in a relegation/promotion play off with teams out of the 2nd amateur division.

The rest of Belgian football

Now these leagues are all on FM. In reality there is also a 2nd and 3th amateur division who can be seen as some sort of a national division, truth is that they are not really national leagues but more inter regional leagues. If you relegate from the 3th amateur division you will play in the 1st provincial. The provincial system has 4 tiers, from 1st to 4th. In most of these divisions you have 16 clubs. 1st has only one series of 16 clubs and each of the 10 provinces have this. The second provincial has two series (called A and B), third has three series (called A, B and C) the fourth differentiates from province to province, this due to the amount of clubs the province has. Some will have 4 series, some will have 5 or even 6 series. For example, I myself come from the province of Antwerp and the fourth province of Antwerp has 6 series. Our neighboring province to the south (Brabant) has 7 series.

Episode 2: Can they rise from their ashes?

You are up to speed now with how the Belgian footballing pyramid looks like and works.
Question is who am I?

Well my name is Leon Wolvenberg, born in 1981 and started playing youth football in 1987. I lived with my grandparents and started playing for the local team in our village. K. Boom F.C. that back then was active in the second tier of Belgian Football. Unfortunately we moved to a new house a year later about 50 kilometers away which meant I had to search for a new club and I signed as a youth player for KFC Lille who were active in the fourth tier of Belgian football. I stayed there from 1988 until 1998. The last year I was there I broke into the first team in the 6th tier of Belgian football. Since then until my retirement in 2022 I played for 11 different teams, one of them in the Netherlands all the others in Belgium and combined that with playing FUTSAL (indoor football). In my two final years I combined playing football with being a youth manager for my last club as an active player and got me some coaching badges. Now that I hung my boots my goal was simple. My very first club as a youth player was in trouble. They went bankrupt in 1998 and merged with another team from the same village. So K. Boom F.C who once on a blue monday played in the top tier of Belgium (late 70’s and early 90’s) merged with K. Rupel S.K and became K Rupel Boom F.C.

The blue and white of Boom merged with the black and white of Rupel and got blue, black and white as colors. They took the home ground of Boom FC, Gemeentelijk Parkstadion (translated Comunal Park Stadium) and kept their nickname De Steenbakkers.

The club began well, in their first year they were promoted as vice champion out of the 7th tier of Belgium. It took them 2 years to get promoted out of the 6th tier because only the champion could be promoted and there is no play off in this division. Three years later the club won the play off in the highest provincial league and went back to national football. Back then football was not yet reorganized and you had 4 national tiers and 4 provincial tiers. Their first year back into the national divisions was immediately a success, finishing second gave them a ticket for the promotion play offs which they won. It came too soon and after a season in third tier the club ended 15th and relegated back. The following season they ended third, played the playoffs for promotion again but lost the final. The year after they finished third again, again they went to the playoffs and for a second year in a row they reached the final, only this time they won the final and were promoted to the third tier again. After being 6th in the first season back they finished as vice champions and played in the playoffs. In the final they met UR Namur who played in the second tier but finished on a spot that made them play in the relegation/promotion league. In extra time an own goal by one of the Namur players sealed the deal and Boom got back into the second tier of football after an absence of 22 years. It only lasted one season, ending second from bottom (17th) they relegated back to the third tier.

After the 2015-2016 season Belgian football reorganized into what I explained in the first chapter. Rupel Boom ended 9th in the league and had due to the reformation drop a division. The goal was to get back to the third tier and become an established club there. The first season they ended third. The second season they crowned themselves champion on the final day of the season in a home fixture against the neighbors of SK Londerzeel and were promoted.

We are now in the year 2018 and this is where the problems begin. The homeground of the club, builded in 1970 is outdated. The Belgian FA implied new rules. To be able to play in the second tier of Belgian football you need to have 5.000 seats and to play in the top division that has to be 8.000 seats. The homeground of the club has about 1200 seats in a 8.000 capacity stadium and is situated in a park, which the name of the ground also tells us. Which means it is situated in a recreational zone. This is not allowed, the ground can stay there but expanding the ground is out of the question. Tearing it down and building a new one on the same place updated and fitted to the clubs needs is also out of the question due to its location.

Besides that a radius of 20km around the club tells us there are a lot of big clubs nearby. I’m not gonna mention them all but the most noteworthy in that radius are R. Antwerp FC, Beerschot, KV Mechelen, Lierse and SK Beveren who all play in the top 2 tiers of Belgian football.

And the final point being that the one season in the second tier cost so much on the financial part that it actually gave the club a nudge in the wrong direction. This mostly because the club had to fabricate something of a corridor for the police, television crews (challenger Pro League is live on television) and safety precautions.

This meant that last season a Spanish investor landed in Boom and after the season it became clear that this group of investors called the Phoenix Rising Group would not be the salvation of the club. In real life the club is sold to an American investor called Nathan Crocket and on first glimpse it all looked a lot better until halfway the season it seemed Crocket was a bit naïve and got promised things by the persons he put in charge that were not possible, which in turn led to him closing of a big part of the money coming in from his side and him being brought to court by the previous Spanish investors.

For me this was the call that said I have to take them over and try to save them from a second bankruptcy. Located in the region Rupel & Klein Brabant between Antwerp and Mechelen, which is a really small region of only 5 villages. Can this club rise and challenge for bigger achievements? A club from a village with about the same amount of inhabitants as Eupen (around 18.000) that plays in the Jupiler Pro League, can Rupel Boom once again be a part of the Belgian elite?

Beginning with a budget 49.240€, a wage bill that can carry up to 12.193€/week. A scouting budget of 22.618€ and no transfer money. A group of players consisting of those that fell through the academy’s of the top division clubs filled up with some players that made name in the lower reaches of the Belgian game.

Can De Steenbakkers prevail and produce some new talent? Before going to Anderlecht, Romelu Lukaku, the striker of Inter Milan was a Rupel Boom youth player. His father Roger Lukaku even played for the club scoring 27 goals in 60 appearances, in the three seasons he played for De Steenbakkers he played one of those seasons in the top flight (93-94 season). Another big name that played for the club was Glen De Boeck who would later on become a defender for KV Mechelen and RSC Anderlecht and got 36 caps for the Belgian Red Devils. And ofcourse Danny Veyt who played later on for KSV Waregem that in the 85-86 season would eliminate AC Milan on their route to the semi final of the UEFA Cup which they lost against FC Köln who themselves lost the final against Real Madrid. Veyt would also collect 12 caps for the national squad in which he scored 1 goal. Veyt was part of the Belgian squad that played the semi final of the world cup in Mexico in 1986.