UNION SAINT-GILLOISE OR THE ART OF NOT TAKING YOURSELF SERIOUSLY


“The second favourite club of any lover of “real football.”


It’s match day in Forest. The Chaussée de Bruxelles along the west side of Parc Duden is starting to get busy.

The first supporters of the Royale Union Saint-Gilloise are rushing into the Club House located under the Art Deco stand. Jupiler is coming out of the barrels at Union’s Taverne. The Unionists are hosting Royal Antwerp in the grey twilight.

Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise

Attending a match at the Joseph Marien stadium is like taking a one-way ticket in a time machine. USG has managed to preserve the values and authenticity of professional football of yesteryear, and even of amateur football of today, and capitalise on them to better build its current success.

Well beyond its remarkable sporting success since 2021, Royale Union Saint-Gilloise is the feel-good football club par excellence. The second favourite club of any lover of “real football”. Football that would almost make you forget the sporting and economic stakes of modern football. It was as if a match were just a pretext to get together and share a moment with family or friends.

Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise

Of course, the Joseph Marien stadium isn’t a stadium in tune with the times, but it’s the guarantor of the sustainability of a romanticism that is in the process of extinction.

A romanticism mixed with authenticity and a bonhomie carefully maintained by the historic supporters of the Union, the real ones, those present during the 48 years of purgatory up to the fourth national level of Belgian football before the rise to the Jupiler Pro League and then to the European Cup.

Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise

Since the rise, the popular base of the club has expanded season after season. The sporting success and the gentrification of Forest and Saint-Gilles are shaking up the sociological profile of the fans.

The former popular crowd is now joined by a more hobo crowd, but let it be said, even if some neophytes have to learn the offside rule, the values anchored in the stands of the Joseph Marien stadium don’t waver.

Respect and anti-fascism are established as ultimate principles. But what strikes you first when you mingle with the supporters in the East stand is the zwanze. The zwanze is the typical Brussels art of not taking yourself seriously.

The zwanze is a state of mind that gives, for example, the idea to a club participating in the European Cup to celebrate each of its goals with a seemingly frivolous hit about the post-atomic era by the Italo disco group Righeira, Vamos a la playa. Refreshing. Like a beer under a light rain. Ici, ici, c’est Saint-Gilles !


ALL WORDS AND IMAGES BY THE BRILLIANT GUIREC MUNIER

You can see Guirec’s work on Argentina in Brittany here as well as his piece on New York Football Club,  The Twilight of Janstadion and Heart of Midlothian.

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