#104: Campiones
[Mauricio Pocchetino voice]: "Thank you football. Thank you Union."
This week’s monthly round-up will be, in the great tradition of that Mitchell & Webb sketch, all about football, Football, FOOTBALL. How could it be otherwise when Union St Gilloise won their first Belgian league title in 90 years. And I got to be there to see them do it. Enjoy like, subscribe, etc. On est champions.
10 hours before kick-off. I’m visiting friends who’ve just given had their second child. We don’t talk about football. I don’t even want to think about it. Push it from my mind, I thought, there’ll be enough time left in the rest of the day to worry about it. Anyway, it’s going to be fine, isn’t it? They’re hardly going to do it again, are they? They can’t, surely they can’t. It’ll be fine. It’s going to be fine. I just hope it stops raining, league title or no league title, I don’t want to stand out in the rain all evening on the Marien’s roofless terraces. Better to worry about the weather than the rest. I have as much control over the weather as I do over the result, maybe more even. We race home on the bike to be back in time for the arrival of our new house-guests - a pair of kittens. Something else to distract from the day.
Five hours before kick-off. I’m harvesting fennel from a field in Ganshoren. Another distraction technique, cosplaying as a farmer at the small CSA farm of which we’re a member. Today it’s fennel and coriander, a couple of turnips for pickling and some prophylactic salad doomed to wilt and die in the downstairs fridge. It’s good therapy, the zelf-pluck farm, especially on days like today. I don’t really have to think of much other than what I could do with the fennel (risotto) and the turnips (pickle them) and the salad (leave it wilt and die in the basement fridge). While I’m walking through the polytunnel my phone vibrates to a message from a friend. He’s an Anderlecht fan, not a die-hard but good for some Brussels football banter. He wishes me luck and signs off with the words “Just don't think of 2023 😬”.
2023. June 4, a day that will live on in infamy. I still remember standing on the terrace in the Marien next to David and the two of us watching Club Brugge and looking up into the sky in despair only to see the helicopter with the league trophy in it disappearing behind the west stand as it flew north to Antwerp and into Union’s fan folklore. For a brief window we were league champions, we’d broken the curse of 90 years of failure, we’d won the league against all the odds, this pluck upstart of expats and IPA drinkers, and a whole world of different futures opened up in front of us. A delirious pitch invasion. A trophy presentation on Place Van Meenen. Champions League adventures across the European continent. A raised two fingers up to the big boys across the canal in Anderlecht.
But then a man called Homma bundled the ball into our goal, collapsing all of these possible timelines and potential futures into one, lonely singularity. Defeat. “We can't explain it, we can only live it”, I wrote after that defeat. And today we do it again. Don’t explain it. Just live it. And don’t think about 2023.
One hour before kick-off. In the Zwanze fan zone at the base of the Sint Gillis town hall. Everywhere blue and yellow. It takes 10 minutes to queue up for a beer. I find my friends my smalltalk comes hard. I can’t really focus now, butterflies in my stomach. I see an acquaintance, a magazine editor, but I can’t go up and say hello. My tongue is dry, even with a mouthful of Zinne Pils. We leave it late to walk the kilometre or so down to the stadium; the roads are quiet, or quieter than I would have thought, flashes of blue and yellow between the trees. I trip over a loose stone and feel my hamstrings scream. Another distraction. The queue at the stadium is small, everyone’s already inside. Across the pitch in the away section someone points out the travelling Gent fans have brought beachballs with them. They’re chanting our name, not their own. Something to cling to, a reassurance. We could really do this. Could we really do this?
45 minutes after kick-off. Someone behind me in the stand passes me a beaker of beer. I am sick. I cannot look at it, let alone contemplate drinking it. 11 minutes in we’re in delirium, 1-0 up and on our way. I hugged the stranger next to me. I may have kissed his forehead. We catch the first few Giorgio Moroderish beats of Vamos a la playa before they are subsumed by the crowd’s jubilant ecstasy. None of us are jubilant now. Two minutes from the half-time whistle a Union oldboy slips a stiletto between our ribs and all the air goes out of the stadium. 1-1. Back where we started, worse even. It’s happening again. Is it happening again? It can’t happen again.
75 minutes after kick-off. It’s over. It’s happening. Not 2023. But 2025. It’s really happening. We’re going to do it. Not bottle it, but win it. Promise David - what a name, what a player - has made it so. I hug Paul. I hug John, I hug Carmine and I hug Silvia. I hug the stranger next to me, and I hug Colin. 15 minutes to acclimatise to the new reality. There is no helicopter on the horizon today, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
94 minutes after kick-off. The referee blows it up. Anthony Moris, a blur of pink exhaustion collapses onto the grass. I’m already halfway to the pitchside barriers when I hear the shrill blast. I'm not the first over the top, but I’m not far behind. A chubby little boy has gotten stuck halfway so I grab his heel and hoist it up and over the advertising hoarding. He lands with a thump on the turf and sprints across the pitch. I follow. Everywhere around me is delirium. I’ve lost sight of my friends, I am sure they’re behind me. I don’t really know what to do? Does anyone? I’ve never done a pitch invasion before, not like this. Two years ago we dripped onto the pitch like zombies, the life sucked out of us by the crushing inevitability of failure. Now we’ve won, we don’t really know what to do with it. So I keep sprinting, the growing mass of limbs somewhere near the centre circle. I see a player to my left. I run over and tousle his hair, screaming in his ear unintelligible congratulations. I instantly feel bad about it; he stands there, surrounded by teenagers with one arm around him and the other holding their phone aloft, and he looks just as bereft as the rest of us, his face exhausted and uncomprehending in the face of what he's just accomplished. We congeal into a singular mass of bodies, swaing back and forth in front of the makeshift podium now being erected on the pitch in front of the VIP tribune. A wiry women with her white t-shirt pulled up and over her head with a pair of “Union Champions” stickers over her nipples tries to push through to get closer to the front while whispering to herself and no one in particular “Union”. But there is no room. A man falls in front of me and we try to hoist him up before he is trampled by the rest of us. To my left I see Joël coming towards me and he sees me only late and we embrace and his voice croaks a disbelieving “on est champions” in my ear and we release and embrace a second time. I see Jean Van Roy and he’s too far away but I grab his thumb and we shake and let go again. I see Paul and his yellow cap in front of me but I can’t get to him and he can’t hear me so I stay where I am and follow the motions of the crowd as it sways back and forth to some unheard rhythm. I thought I would cry when the final whistle went. I thought the emotion would pour out of me, a fizzed bottle uncorked. But there’s none of that. Just dazed relief. Acceptance, almost. As if it was the most normal thing in then world that we have won and that we are on the pitch celebrating and that soon we will see the players in front of us lift the trophy, something that hasn’t happened here in the Dudenpark for 90 years. I grab some bunting when it’s released, saving it to take home to the children. I wish they’d been here by my side to celebrate, but I flubbed their tickets and so they’ll have to relive it second-hand when I wake them up tomorrow morning. They would have hated the crowds and the fireworks and the reek of cordite and sweat and beer that’s engulfed us. The trophy is raised, the champagne released and a chant begins to ripple through the fans crushing to get a look at the podium. Soft and slow at first, before soone everyone is belting it out at the top of their lungs.
Campiones. Campiones. Olé, olé, olé. CAMPIONES CAMPIONES OLÉ OLÉ OLÉ.
Four hours after kick-off. Everything now is epilogue. Time for a couple of bottles of Zinnebir from a nightshop to wash down a hastily ordered four cheese pizza. Back to the town hall to join the rest of the stadium. Flares. Roman candles. More flares. Ricchi e Poveri. Gala. Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na. Sébastien Pocognoli, Union’s coach and my junior by a year, stands on the plinth at the entrance to the town hall and takes the mike. He raises a trembling fist into the smoky red night air and commences into a chant of ‘Bruxelles, je t’aime” and now the tears come, hot and and soft and puddling at the corners of my eyes and invisible in the darkness.
Seven hours after kick-off. Home. passing through Hallepoort I see someone has slapped on of those Union Champions stickers on the ticket barrier. I am the only one in blue and yellow in my carriage, the last metro bar one before the system shuts down for the night.
I turn the key in the front door. I grab the black tarpaulin and drape it over the bike and make sure it’s locked. I throw my bag on the dinner table. I hang my scarf up in the hall and remind myself to put it away upstairs tomorrow. I try to bend down and pet one of the cats and realise I've been standing for almost eight hours. I sit down and rummage in my bag for the gold bunting, leaving it out on the table for the children to find in the morning.