I am not a very exuberant person. This confession will not, I think, come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I embarrass easily, and am easily embarrassed on other people’s behalf. It’s what makes me a terrible football supporter; I just can’t give it the full-throated roar on the terraces without fearing other people around me think I look and sound like an idiot. I’ve been getting better - going to the Stade Marien most Sundays has been useful as exposure therapy to help me get over myself. But when a rowdy crowd of fellow Union Saint Gilloise fans piled into my carriage on the number three tram at Hallepoort last Thursday evening and began shouting and bouncing, I was mortified for them, and for the other passengers.
It didn’t matter we’d come from the same match, or that we were all - all of us in blue and yellow - headed to the same party outside the St Gilles town hall to celebrate Union’s first trophy in nearly a century. I cringed hard at the eye-rolling and the muttered tuts of annoyance from the people in the seats near me. I turned up the volume on my phone so I could more intently listen to Melvyn Bragg and his guests. But it didn’t work. More fans clambered in at the Parvis and now the tram was properly rocking. Literally bouncing up and down on the tracks to the rhythm of their terrace chants. Over the din I can just about hear the tram’s sound system cracking into life, though I can’t quite hear what the driver is trying to say. I assume, because we’ve been becalmed at the platform for a couple of minutes now, that we can’t leave until everyone has quietened down a little. But then I hear a low rumble, the same bass note that echoed around the stadium all through the match, distorted by the speakers but still the same bass note that reverberates around the Marien, now rising to a wobbly crescendo and prompting the clump of fans at the end of the carriage to raise their arms and ball their fists. He’s not going to tell them to stop at all. The drone from the speakers cresdendoes and the fans down the carriage belt out “Bruxelles, ma ville-eh, je t’aime-uh…”, led by the maniac in the driver’s cabin. People pull out their phones, creased brows now replaced with disbelieving headshakes and wide smiles. I laugh despite myself.
The crowd gathered on Place Van Meenen is not as large as I expected for such an epochal event. It might be because most of the fans are scrunched in at the base of the wide stone steps that lead from the square up to the entrance to the town hall. Firecrackers explode from this canary mass of bodies, dying the gathering dusk maroon red with the smoke from their flares. Towards the back of the square sort of relieved anticipation hangs over the less riotous fans. A trophy - their first Belgian Cup in 100 years - to show something for three years of agonising near-misses. They’ve finally done it, won something. And we have earned this party. The fair weather fans. The glory hunters. The long-term loyalists who had to endure the traumas of away days at Tubize and other lower league indignities. They’ve all earned this, and everyone’s ruddy faces are showing the strain of the day’s exertions. I’ve only supported the club a wet week, and even for me I felt the bitter gall rise in my throat, fingers clamped tightly onto my hair in the final dozen minutes of the game, far away from the action in the rafters at Heizel, willing the referee to blow it up.
And when he did we slumped back in our small plastic seats, exhausted and relieved. People keep asking if the team and the trophy are going to show up for their hero’s welcome, but it doesn’t really matter if they do or not. The party will continue on without them. Here on the sacred ground on which the club was founded - not that any of my drinking partners are particularly interested in this historical nugget. They’re too distracted by the silhouette that appears from behind a door at the top of the stairs, a silhouette that looks uncannily like that of the mayor. Is he about to make an announcement, an introduction? He turns his back on the crowd as an underling pulls out a phone and points it at him, then disappears behind some more smoke. There’s an election coming in October, after all.
The night descends and the crowd thins a little. The prospect of the team making an appearance diminishes, and so the rowdier cohort of fans begins to shift, crowding around the mobile mixing desk of a pair of septuagenarian DJs who’ve rocked up by the beer tent with their turntables and trove of 45s. We bop along with empty bottles of Zinnebir in our hands to Daddy Cool with Union fans who were probably around when Boney M were new, but still half a century too young to have lived through the last Union victory party.
I’ve been loosened up by a couple of beers, but the day’s exertions have taken their toll, and I’m always just a couple of beers behind the party curve to really get in the mood. I give up hope of seeing any players and bow out around 10.30. I’ve still got enough juice left, and my inhibitions have been worn down enough so that when the DJs queue up the Gypsy Kings, I join in with the lusty communal rendition of Volare as I trip down the hill back towards the quiet of the tram. Union should win things more often. It’s obviously good for me
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Misscellaneous Notes
Apologies for the delay in this week's newsletter - got hit with a belter of a migraine on Tuesday evening and yesterday morning. Still a bit woolly, which explains any extant typos
Also - I LEFT ABOUT 10 MINUTES TOO SOON! I woke up last Friday to see several players and the club's ownera did make an appearance before I'd even made it to the metro station…
The tram driver anecdote might be the most revealing illustration of Bruseleir "philosophy", featuring delicious zwanze, and the reaction of the people that were initially annoyed at the commotion is what somewhat makes this "big" city feel more liveable than most comparable agglomerations <3