KVC Westerlo – Club Brugge

It could be a nice Saturday afternoon in the Kempen region. With the arrival of Club Brugge, Kuipje is sold out (again). The West Flanders club remains a popular club here in our area as well and both teams will be aiming for their own strengths, with a place in the top six of the standings at stake.

KVC Westerlo

Surely the points loss in the previous game against Beerschot produced a sour feeling. The men from the Kiel barely managed 47 passes in our half for 97 minutes. Yet they managed to cash in on two goals from there. The footage of that match will no doubt have been analysed, because surely we expect a bit more passes from the opponent on our half on Saturday. Fortunately, our 17-year-old central defender – who doesn’t know him by now after 10 games? – Luka Vuskovic pulled us over the line with 2 goals, so we still managed to salvage a more than deserved point.

The point total, in a mutual match against Club, remains scarce, very scarce. The last home win dates back to October 1999, when Vedran Pelic was the only one to kick the ball into the net that Sunday evening. Four more draws and 14 defeats followed, yet it is notable that they were not ‘big’ defeats – except in 2002 and 2009, when the scoreboard was 1-4 after 90 minutes each time.

It will also be a special match for our coach Timmy Simons. Every Flemish newspaper visited this week to interview him. What do you want? No less than 12 years of his career he was on loan at Brugge, this divided over 2 periods (2000-2005 and 2013-2018). 439 times he wore the blue-black shirt, scored 46x and also provided 18 assists. No wonder he was inducted into ‘The Hall of Fame’.

For the first time in his fledgling coaching career (67 games on his CV), he will coach a game against his former employer. Knowing him, I know he will be keen to keep those 3 points in the Kuipje.

In any case, our kitchen team provided a lucky charm this week: plates falling out of their hands and bang on the ground, and you know what they say: shards bring … In any case, we will know on Saturday at around quarter to 6.

Club Brugge

In the eternal ranking of our Belgian league, they are in second place (after Anderlecht), but in the last 5 years they have risen to our number 1. In the beginning of the season, they had a difficult start with 1 in 9 against KV Mechelen, Standard and Genk. This was followed by 4 wins in a row against Antwerp, Dender, Cercle Brugge and Kortrijk. The last 3 encounters were again against a slightly stronger opponent: at home against Gent (2-4) and Union (1-1) and at home to Charleroi (1-1).

Club is also the club with the most expensive core of players (the average value per player is €5.54 million) . Among the 25th most ‘expensive’ players in our league, seven Club players are listed: Skov Olsen (No1), Onyedika, De Cuyper, Tzolis, Ordonez, Vetlesen and Nilsson. Our Max is even listed at number one as a Belgian player in our Jupiler Pro League. Conclusion: quality enough present. A nice detail is that Brandon Mechele (109), Hans Vanaken (90), Simon Mignolet (10) and Dedryck Boyata (1) were once on the pitch together with our coach.

If we look at the proportions of their goal totals, we see that they barely score in the first 45 minutes (25%) and are especially good at shot in the last 15 minutes (32%). The goals were scored by Skov Olsen (4), Vanaken and Nilssson (3), Mechele and Tzolis (2) and youngsters Seys and Talbi (1).

The 11 players with the most playing minutes are: Mignolet, Seys, Mechele, Ordonez, De Cuyper, Onyedika, Vetlesen, Vanaken, Skov Olsen, Tzolis and Nilsson.

Nicolas Laforge

A top match also deserves a top referee, this 37-year-old Walloon referee will be whistling his 342nd match in his career. For our Kemphans this will be the 17th appearance, for Club Brugge his 45th. At the Kuipje itself, we had some pretty good results with him in the past, with wins against Ostend, Lokeren and Cercle Brugge, draws against Antwerp, Seraing and STVV and defeats against Mouscron and Standard. The last time he whistled a game for us was early this year, in and against blue-black Bruges (3-0).

Text and statistics: Peter Boons