#102: Against Sober Football
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, Brussels' brewers club (BONUS)
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I’m just so excited.
With Royale Union Saint-Gilloise on the cusp of a historic, record-breaking title triumph in Belgium’s Jupiler Pro League this Sunday, I thought I’d dip into the Brussels Beer City archive and share a feature on the club, about how it’s become the unofficial football club of the city’s brewers and beer lovers, and why it has the best stadium bar in all of Belgium.
So here’s a bonus newsletter. On reste au bar. Right to the end.
Next Gueuze Wins // Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, Brussels' undisputed brewers football club
I. In the beginning there was the Marien
Sunday, 17 January 1960. President Eisenhower is visiting Moscow, there’s snow on the Côte d’Azur, and Brussels football club Union Saint-Gilloise hosts Beringen, a miner’s club from Limburg coal country. Any other Sunday, and Pierre Van Roy and his son Jean-Pierre would motor on the family Lambretta to the club’s Stade Marien home in Forest. With Union challenging for the title and Beringen in relegation form, they’d expect a routine home win.
But it’s -2°C outside today, and Pierre doesn’t fancy it. Jean-Pierre isn’t put off though, swapping the scooter for the number 90 tram to Place Albert and then a walk through the snow to the stadium. He’s not the only one undeterred by the bad weather; the Marien’s north terrace—the populaire—is packed as usual.
On a white pitch with red painted lines, Union scores twice in the first 12 minutes, only for Beringen to score two of their own within three minutes. The visitors escape out of the cold at half-time with the score 3-3. Union take the lead again in the 65th minute before a late goal by Union’s “tremendous” inside-left Paul Van den Berg finishes off Beringen. “I still remember it,” Jean-Pierre says, 63 years later. “Now, that was plezant.” It would have taken something worse than snow for him to abandon his Sunday ritual, because long before he became one of Brussels’ most famous brewers, Jean-Pierre Van Roy was born a Unioniste.
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise’s unofficial club motto is “Against Sober Football”, and nowhere else in Brussels are the city’s two great folk past times—football and beer—so closely intertwined. For both the club and Brussels’ brewers, the last 100 years was a period of slow, terminal and seemingly permanent decline bookended by dizzying highs.
In Union’s darkest days, their stadium became a place where the football was usually bad but at least the beer was always good. Six decades after that snowy January Sunday, the football has improved and Union are once again challenging for the Belgian title. With Brussels’ breweries revelling in their own phoenix-like revival, and beer having become a central part of the club’s self-image, Royale Union Saint-Gilloise is now the undisputed brewer’s club of Brussels.
