Rarely experienced a press conference where the coach of the other side was very lyrical about the other side. Hein congratulated Westerlo on their performance, “they were better than us in every way, only bad luck kept them from a win and don’t forget that they should have had the 3 points in Mechelen as well”. It was therefore a match to lick the fingers off.

KVC Westerlo

Interim coach Bart Goor brought his team to the kick-off fearlessly. Right from the kick-off, the Gentenaars wanted to put high pressure, but our Kemphans played this off fantastically with the 0-1 after only 1 minute of play. Three minutes later it should even have been 0-2, bad luck in finishing you know …

Talk of a dream start, partly due to a few tactical changes. For instance, left-winger Jordan Bos appeared at right-back, after Bryan Reynolds’ late exit. Our Aussie did this superbly. Nico(las) Madsen also claimed his starting place again and was played out as a 9.5 in support of deep striker Lucas Stassin, who relegated Matija Frigan to the bench.

Even though we are still looking for that first three-pointer, week after week beautiful things are being shown with various players and tactical variations. This may be called successful again, and we keep repeating it: this was the set-up in Play Off 2: being able to play relaxed and work with an eye on next season.

The past home match against STVV produced a goal-fest: six goals were scored, neatly split between the two teams and 2 goals in the last 2 minutes of the match, again the balance was balanced.

Since our debut in First Division, STVV had been a favourite opponent for us at the Kuipje. Almost every game has been won, only in the last three encounters (2019-2023) we failed to win.

Time to change that back.

STVV

Mathematically, the Limburgers are not yet eliminated to win this mini-competition, but it would be a punishment if they could still catch up with the 11 points behind leader Gent – and then Mechelen (number 2) is not allowed to score any more points either.

The sympathetic German coach Fink has been able to use the same players in the starting line-up for almost an entire season (72%). Time to experiment too? So it seems, because already in the previous game (Standard 1-1), some of the strongest players stayed on the bench and the “substitutes” had a go from the start.
Captain Godeau, left-back Bocat and attacking flanks Koita and Steuckers were on the bench in Liege. The names of their replacements were Janssens, Ogawa, Barnes and Bertaccini.

The unfortunate Steuckers had only a brief substitution. He was on the pitch for only 45 seconds, when he immediately suffered a tap to his left ankle on his first ball contact and had to leave the pitch again.

The fact is that the Sweaters are a better home than away team. At their own Daio Wasabi they reached 32 points and in their away games they clocked up 16 points. They have already scored 44x with Koita being the purveyor with his 15 and on away they get the double number of goals against (19-36). 50% of their goals fall between minute 60 and 90.

Simon Bourdeaud’Hui

As in the previous home game against Standard, this 28-year-old referee will be our match referee.

He made his debut in the highest league in September 2023 and meanwhile this is already his 10th match. Six in the regular league and three in the Play offs.
Both Westerlo and STVV he already met three times. We won once (OHL 0-2) and drew twice (AA Gent 2-2 and Standard 3-3).

In total he sits at 4 for our Kemphans, as in 2021 he also whistled a Westerlo vs Virton 2-0. It is also noteworthy that in 3 of those 4 games he was on the dot each time.

Text and statistics: Peter Boons