In the Shadow of Heysel

The city of Brussels is home to Belgium’s most successful club side, and the site of tragedy at Heysel thirty-five years ago, but there is much more for football enthusiasts to discover. Rob Francis takes us on a journey through the football culture of the Belgian capital.

December 2020

The wind whistled through the trees as I peeked through the metal fence which surrounds Stade Roi Baudouin in Brussels. I knew what I was looking for, but I still had to squint to make out the white diagonal shape which appeared to lean against the outer wall of the main stand. It would be easy to confuse it with the various cranes and diggers that today were servicing this part of the stadium during the Covid-19 pandemic, but this structure had an altogether different function.  

Underneath the shape it was possible to make out a grey rectangle – a plaque – on the wall, though it was impossible to read it from the road. This was as near as I could get, and though I could not make out the writing, I knew what it said:

In memoriam – 29.05.85

For those outside Belgium, the word Heysel is synonymous with hooliganism and tragedy; the venue of the 1985 European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool FC, where 39 people lost their lives on one of European football’s darkest days. Perhaps jarringly for some, in Brussels the word is still in everyday use as the name of the principal underground stop for the national stadium, and many fans still refer to Stade Roi Baudouin by its old name – Heysel Stadium.  

Heysel is arguably the worst national stadium in Western Europe, and potentially the whole of Europe. It is a cavernous structure, served by no fewer than three metro stops on the same line, and is unloved by the football community who see it (correctly) as being more suited to athletics and concerts. Whilst other countries across the continent – many poorer than Belgium and with a lesser football heritage – have constructed state-of-the-art stadia, some of which are large enough to potentially host an international tournament and a European final (e.g., Romania, Northern Macedonia), Heysel has been left behind, an unloved and old-fashioned relic from the previous century. To make matters worse, plans to build a new national stadium on the outskirts of Brussels that could host games at Euro 2020 had to be dropped, and have now been permanently shelved due to the usual political bickering and a healthy portion of incompetence.

Commune life

In the football fraternity Brussels has become a byword for tragedy, poor planning, and national embarrassment. But Heysel and the national stadium is of course just one strand of a complex picture. The city of Brussels has nineteen local districts known as communes. These communes are largely autonomous and fiercely independent, each having their own town hall and mayor. Most have a football team. 

The best known of these is Anderlecht, a large commune in the south-west of the city. For most of the last twenty years, RSC Anderlecht has been the sole Brussels representative in the Belgian top division, but Brussels is far from being a one-club city. A few kilometres to the north of Anderlecht lies RWDM, also known as Molenbeek, a club that has died more than once but is now undergoing something of a revival in the second tier of professional football as RWDM47. In the affluent southern suburbs lies Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, another historic club on the up following a few decades in the doldrums, and the favourite haunt of many a groundhopper. These three clubs are the only professional clubs in the city, but there are numerous amateur outfits plying their trade most weekends in some spectacular and picturesque grounds, some of which have not changed in well over a half century.

The crumbling terraces of the western commune of Jette are but one example, whilst Stade des Trois Tilleuls, currently hosting Boitsfort in sixth-tier football, can still lay claim to being the second largest stadium in the country. Its huge terraces are a place of pilgrimage for groundhoppers from far and wide – and apparently a popular place to walk the dog, even whilst a game is going on. Brussels football culture is rooted in the city’s idiosyncratic districts. Belgium as a whole is a country where people ”live under the bell tower”, and where local dialects are so distinct that television subtitles are the only way for many Flemings to understand each other.

More recently, football identity is becoming blurred even within communes. The Brussels commune of Schaerbeek has no fewer than three teams: the well-established Crossing, FC Schaerbeek, and FC Kosova Schaerbeek, the latter founded by the Albanian community, but which today serves a broader cross-section of the population with youth outfits of all ethnicities. Brussels then is a patchwork of many colours – les Mauves et Blancs of Anderlecht by far the largest – but it is the many smaller patches that help give Brussels football its indelible richness and variety. In Brussels there is seemingly a club for everyone.

Anderlecht, the purple giant

The commune of Anderlecht is the third largest in terms of population and area in Brussels. Located to the west of Gare du Midi – where the Eurostar arrives – it is predominantly a working-class area in the process of gentrification. Getting off the metro at Saint-Guidon, you walk through a series of tightly packed terraced houses before Stade Constant Vanden Stock appears behind a clump of trees. On matchdays these streets are thronged with supporters, many of whom have travelled from out of town and so would not be considered genuinely anderlechtois – indeed, the club is often criticised for failing to give back to its working-class commune.

The accusation of wealth – the club of the rich – has been levelled at Anderlecht ever since the club decided to invest in the stadium in the early 1980s, ensuring it became the first in Europe to be equipped with executive boxes. By Belgian standards it does seem posh, certainly when compared with arch-rivals Club Brugge and Standard Liège, whose grounds have a more earthy feel. Notwithstanding the terraces behind both goals, Anderlecht’s entire ground seems modern: the corners are filled in, and the closeness to the pitch resembles that of a typical middling English club ground today. Yet Anderlecht also has a reputation for hooliganism that is not unfounded. Away fans are bussed in and out of the stadium, and security ensures they will not come into contact with the home support anywhere outside the ground. What tension there is in the home end tends to be alcohol-fuelled, with fans filling up either side of the game at one of the many bars in the surrounding streets.

A visit to Anderlecht can be an enjoyable and comfortable experience, but whilst the club has an identity of sorts, the atmosphere is rather generic and even soulless. The commune may have given its name to the club, but for all that you could be anywhere in the country. To look for the true bruxellois experience, you need to visit elsewhere.

 RWDM – the phoenix from the flames

The commune of Molenbeek has acquired an unwanted reputation in recent years after it was found to be the home base of the terrorists who attacked Paris and Brussels. Walking the streets around Stade Edmond Machtens – named after a politician who was mayor of the commune for forty years – you are struck not by how dangerous or poor, but how run-of-the-mill it is. Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, to give it its full name, is slightly smaller in population than Anderlecht but is nearly a third of its size, and its population density is twice the Brussels average. It stretches from the city centre to the western outskirts and becomes progressively more middle-class as you move outwards. The stadium is conveniently located midway, a fifteen-minute walk from the nearest metro station.

Anderlecht may be the best-known club in Brussels, but RWDM – the name Racing White Daring Molenbeek deriving from a series of mergers across the decades – is probably the most bruxellois. The brass band is a staple of home games, and the fast food vans sell that rather atypical pre-match snack – snails. Support hails from the local area and is very passionate, sometimes spilling over into trouble, particularly on their travels. You are more likely to hear Brusseleirs, the Brussels dialect, at RWDM than at any other club, the fans literally wearing local phrases on their t-shirts.

All of which makes it odd that, for some years in the mid-2000s, RWDM ceased to exist. In 2002 the club was dissolved for financial reasons but, as is so often the case, was resurrected by a group of fans and restarted in the lowest tier. RWDM now sit proudly once more as a professional outfit in the Belgian second division, pulling in three to four thousand per home game – the second highest attendance in Brussels. This is an example of a successful phoenix club, which has retained its proud history, core support, and local identity through troubled times.

Union – the history boys

The south of Brussels is rich – bobo to use the local term for bourgeois middle-class professionals. The area is speckled with tree-lined streets, townhouses decorated with Art Nouveau designs, and parks large enough to get lost in. One such park located in the commune of Forêt (Forest) is Parc Duden, which overlooks Stade Joseph Marien, home to the city’s oldest club Union Saint-Gilloise. Union are historically the third most successful team in Belgium. In the first half of the twentieth century they were Belgium’s most successful side, winning the league eleven times by 1935. This was followed by forays into European football in the late 1950s and early 60s. Since the 1970s, however, Union have spent much of their time shuttling around the amateur leagues in Belgium, a big name in a pool of minnows.

But now, like arch-rivals RWDM from across the Brussels-Charleroi canal, the club is undergoing something of a revival. Since the mid-2010s they have not only been able to stay in the second tier of professional football, but at the time of writing Union sit top of the league and could yet be promoted to the top division for the first time in nearly fifty years. Reflecting the club’s local area, support for Union is made up of left-wing bohemian types and a fair few expatriates drawn to the warm-natured welcome, the old-school terrace and clubhouse, and, of late, the quality on the pitch. Stade Joseph-Marien – named after a former club president – is steeped in history. You do not so much feel the weight of history as live it. Whether you are sat in the main stand, unchanged for many decades, or stood across the other side of the pitch on the large terrace, with a bar at the back, you could be watching football from any time in the last century. The atmosphere is passionate, but hooliganism is unheard of unless away fans bring it with them. 

The Union fanbase has a definite left-wing vibe and a rather progressive streak. This is another ground and atmosphere which attracts groundhoppers from far and wide – “a more romantic groundhop would be hard to imagine” eulogises The Rough Guide to European Football. As their name suggests, the main fan group the Union Bhoys (joined recently by some “Ghirls”) take their inspiration from Celtic FC in Scotland, but their style is more akin to that of Celtic’s kindred spirits, the Republic of Ireland. Win or lose, Union fans will support their team and will celebrate or commiserate at the stadium’s memorable clubhouse before and after the game.

Out of the shadow

Brussels tends to be overlooked as a football hotbed. Heysel still casts its shadow, but if you dig a little deeper you can be rewarded with clubs which very much draw on their localities to create their own unique identities. Watching Anderlecht bears little relation to watching either RWDM or Union, and there are interesting contrasts between the latter two as well. Whether you are downing snails from a burger van in Molenbeek, drinking local Cantillon Gueuze beer at Union’s clubhouse, mingling with the crowds at Anderlecht, or just visiting a local game at a lower level in the communes of Ganshoren, Jette, Schaerbeek, or Boitsfort, the Brussels football tapestry is rich, varied, and hugely enticing. 

The shadow of Heysel, and of the ongoing failings around a new national stadium, continue to loom large, but the Brussels football scene provides a welcome, mostly small-scale, passionate, and local antidote. For all the city’s failings, Brussels football continues to find ways to push through into the light.

Words: Rob Francis | Imagery: @fotografierende; Offside; Bert Verhoeff