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BEING BELGIAN: Dass (team) ist wahnsinn!

When the Austrians rolled into Brussels to take on the Red Devils last Tuesday it did not evoke quite the same sense of trepidation amongst the local population as when the Germans arrived earlier this season. It wasn’t always thus. As everybody surely knows, the Austrians have been here before and have not always been so quick to head home. Following some kerfuffle or other the Treaty of Utrecht (signed in 1713) ceded the Spanish (or Southern) Netherlands to Austria. Although the Austrians had relatively little interest in their Netherlands they stayed for about 80 years until in 1794 the region was overrun by France and the Austrians pranced off back to Vienna with their Opera glasses (perhaps it was because they couldn’t see the stage very well that, on 25 August 1830, after a performance at the Brussels opera, a riot erupted, quickly followed by uprisings elsewhere in the country, and the Belgian Revolution led to the country’s independence. Perhaps!). But back to last Tuesday evening and the Red Devils’ most heroic battle in years. 4-4 it ended, a game that evoked memories of the football of yore. Over the top, appeared the tactical instructions from both coaches. Belgium went one up early doors, through Jelle Vossen, the sharp shooting Genk centre forward, but Austrian schemer, Franz Schiemer, and marksman, Marko Arnautović, each struck to leave Belgium adrift at the break. Shortly into the second period sober haired Marouane Fellaini headed Belgium level but Schiemer put Austria back ahead before team mate Scharner got himself needlessly sent off, leaving Das Team (I kid you not, the imagination of these Austrians is endless) a man down with a quarter of the game to go. It took until 5 minutes to the end for Belgium to press home its numerical advantage, Genk striker Marvin Ogunjimi turning the ball home after good work from Eden Hazard. Pandemonium, a bit like the bar at the U2 gig at the same stadium nights earlier. In the 90th minute, St Petersburg player Nicolas Lombaerts nodded the 4-3 into the onion sack. Delirium, unlike anything seen since the 4-3 against the USSR in Mexico 86. Until German born, Stuttgart player, Martin Harnik equalised in the 93^rd minute. Depression, comparable to that of fans of any team other than Genk when they look at the current Jupiler league table. 

Results below, table here:

Zulte Waregem 2 – 3 Club Brugge

Westerlo 1 – 1 KV Mechelen

Eupen 6 – 0 Sint Truiden

Charleroi 1 – 2 Lokeren

AA Gent 2 – 0 Kortrijk

Germinal Beerschot 1 – 1 Lierse

Racing Genk 4 - 2 Standard Liege

Cercle Brugge 1 - 0 Anderlecht

BEING BELGIAN: It's Super Sunday!

The distance between Ostend (Belgium) and Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) is a mere 121.8 kilometres (75.68 miles or 65.72 nautical miles) and it is therefore unsurprising that occasionally infections arrive on Belgian shores from perfidious Albion. In this instance a desire to split the weekend's football action into an implied Shit Saturday yet Super Sunday! This weekend Belgium fell prey to a Sunday of Club Brugge vs AA Gent - the derby of Flanders - and Standard Liege vs RSCA Anderlecht - quite possibly the derby of Belgium. A weekend of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes', all it lacked was Richard 'the lionheart' Keyes telling us that it was the most significant thing to happen in Belgium since the Battle of the Golden Spurs. In 1302, just to put things into some perspective. A militia of guild workers from the Flemish cities defeated the, even at that time, frog eating French, removing their spurs for good measure, and ending Philip the Fair's desire to conquer Flanders. Today the region is split into 5 provinces, two of them eponymous - East (capital Gent) and West (capital Brugge) Flanders. Last season Gent humiliated Brugge 6-2 in a game that had appeared to mark an almost definitive shifting of power from traditionally dominant West to newly empowered East. This (Super) Sunday Brugge came out of the blocks determined to set things straight, Kouemaha, Geraerts and Vargas easing 'Blue-Black' into a 3-0 lead within the first half hour. Yassine El Ghanassy scored for Gent before half time to give The Buffalos hope. Bernd Thijs got a second for them from a deflected free kick in the second half but Brugge held out to give Dutch coach Adrie Koster some welcome respite after a series of reverses. Meanwhile in the south of the country - where the Battle of the Golden Spurs enjoys somewhat less of a following (it has even been insinuated that the Francophone Walloons were sympathetic to the French enemy. Not here, I add hastily...) - Anderlecht visited Standard Liege in a match that saw the two biggest supported teams in the country, the two most recent Champions, the two largest rivals, go head to head. 5-1 Liege, BOOM! A seismic shift in power, Standard back within a point of Anderlecht. The big winners may well have been Racing Genk who were not even playing on this Stupendous Sunday. They extended their lead at the top of the table to five points having come from two down to draw with fifth placed KV Mechelen.

Results below, table here.

KV Mechelen 2 -2 Racing Genk

Lierse 0 - 1 Cercle Brugge

Lokeren 1 - 0 Germinal Beerschot

Kortrijk 1 - 0 Eupen

Sint Truiden 1 - 2 Westerlo

Zulte Waragem 1 - 1 Charleroi

Club Brugge 3 - 2 AA Gent

Standard Liege 5 - 1 Anderlecht

Murray’s worries for 2011 – or Who can stop Nadal?

Andy Murray has said that he needs to get ‘physically stronger’ and to ‘improve his game’ if he is to challenge world number one Rafael Nadal. That seems a worryingly broad (if honest) prescription for a man who harbours hopes of winning a slam title. I do declare that the Scot must break his slam duck in 2011 or I fancy that his chance will have passed – age will increasingly become an issue with every year that passes, as will a building sense of unfulfilled expectation. Is Murray gradually running out of things he can change as he tries to make the transition to slam winner? Murray does appear to have the credentials to pick up a slam, but he needs to find himself in the right place at the right time and make sure he capitalises. Unfortunately for him, there are a number of reasons why 2011 could be a tough year to make the breakthrough. I offer three:

- Nadal: At the time of writing, odds of 11-1 to 16-1 were being given for Nadal to win all four slam tournaments in 2011. Those are pretty short odds in my book for a feat as great and improbable as the season Grand Slam, reflecting the Spaniard’s exceptional form. Could he pull it off?
- Djokovic: His fine run at the US Open appeared to confirm the Serb as the man most likely to pose a threat to the Nadals and Federers of this world – Djokovic, as things stood at 20 September, was ranked world number 2, one spot above Federer. Murray, ranked 4th, was much further behind Federer in terms of the points-gap than he was ahead of the dangerous Robin Soderling in 5th.
- Del Potro: Let us not forget the injury-hit Argentine. If fit, as one observer not unreasonably puts it, “Juan Martin Del Potro, more than Robin Soderling, Roger Federer, Andy Murray, or Novak Djokovic, is the player on tour that could challenge Rafael Nadal for Slams”.

BEING BELGIAN: It's Sods Law!

Being Belgian having stuck it to the Russians last week, obviously Zenit St Petersburg were going to come to Brussels on Wednesday, stroll around a bit, stick the ball in the Anderlecht net three times, and have their commentator on Россия-1, as lost as anyone for famous Belgians, declare:

Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, We have beaten him all. Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, Eddy Merckx, can you hear me Eddy, can you hear me? Your boys took one hell of a beating tonight!

Little would he have known, our imaginary Russian friend, how much it would have hurt. For Eddy ‘the Cannibal’ Merckx is a Brussels Boy, a Ketje, and Anderlecht fan. He even has his own metro station in the commune.

This week, his Anderlecht sought redemption of sorts against KV Kortrijk, at the unusual start time of 9pm on Sunday evening. The reason for the delayed kick-off: car free Sunday in Brussels, which keeps everything but Eddy Merckx’s favourite form of transport out of the 19 Brussels communes, of which Anderlecht is the largest, until 8pm one Sunday every September. In a country seemingly fixated on the small – its two major tourist attractions are after all a statue of a small boy relieving himself and a rather large reconstruction of the smallest thing existing (yes I know they can split it now but let’s not split hairs!) – they think big with Europe’s largest car free day.

As the cars and the team buses rolled back into Brussels, Genk had already beaten Lokeren 3-1 to put the pressure firmly on Anderlecht to keep the distance between the two teams to only two points. It was a test they didn’t fail, Lukaku, Legear and Boussoufa scoring in a facile 3-0 win.

Elsewhere there were goals galore as Franky Dury’s Gent beat his old charges Zulte Waragem 5 – 3, while Club Brugge finally delivered on their promise in humiliating Les Zèbres 5-0 in Charleroi.

Results and match highlights below, table here.

KV Mechelen 1 – 0 Standard Liege

Cercle Bruges 4 – 2 Sint Truiden

Westerlo 2 – 0 Lierse

Eupen 0 – 1 Germinal Beerschot

Racing Genk 3 – 1 Lokeren

Charleroi 0 – 5 Club Brugge

Gent 5 – 3 Zulte Waragem

Anderlecht 3 - 0 KV Kortrijk

Disc world

Taking a stroll down London’s über-hip Brick Lane today (venue, somewhat incongruously, for a Leo Messi adidas corporate signing gig last week), I was transported back to my youth, as amongst the array of delicious smelling fast-food stalls and kitsch bagatelles, I spotted a posse of passive sportifs hunched over some gaming boards – Dominoes? Craps? No, none other than carrom, the sub-continent’s answer to billiards.

This most addictive of two-player games is contested on a square board of lacquered plywood with pockets at each corner. A striking disc, which can be placed anywhere along a baseline on one side of the board, is flicked with the finger to cannon smaller white and black pucks into the pockets; the one who pockets all his men first is the winner. At the start, the pucks are packed together in a complex formation in the centre of the board, the equivalent of the snooker triangle, which the first player breaks. A neutral red puck, the queen, can be pocketed to accrue bonus points at the end of the game, if it is followed by a man of your colour into the same pocket.

 
Shootin' discs: First date?

I spent many a happy hour (sans alcool) over the carrom board, the habitual opponent being my younger sister, who I took great delight in beating – a time-honoured ego booster for the cowardly male; defeat was, of course, always benevolence on my part.