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General Football - Weird Results And Other Things Worth Sharing


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Funnily enough I was at a work event in Hasselt a few weeks ago, which is only a few km from Genk, and is somewhat bigger. As Hasselt doesn't have a football team worthy of the name (they play in the 4th tier amateur league) I asked if most football fans in the city support Genk, and the response was a pretty emphatic 'no'. So I think Genk's fanbase is pretty much limited to the city and surrounding villages... maybe around 100k. 

 

I don't doubt that they're a local club for local people, but given that they get around 18,000 fans at each game, that would be an absolutely massive percentage of locals coming to matches, probably among the highest in Europe. I really don't think they're doing this off a catchment area of 100,000 people. Not saying it's impossible, but it does seem highly improbable. What I think is more likely is that people will travel from quite a bit further afield.
 
This isn't to say that they don't have a huge local support - they clearly do. (Seems quite common in former mining and industrial areas in this part of the world. There are similarities with Lens, another small place with an improbably popular club.) But there's a huge support and then there's mathematical unlikelihood.
 
Still, it's not helped them much tonight.

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I don't doubt that they're a local club for local people, but given that they get around 18,000 fans at each game, that would be an absolutely massive percentage of locals coming to matches, probably among the highest in Europe. I really don't think they're doing this off a catchment area of 100,000 people. Not saying it's impossible, but it does seem highly improbable. What I think is more likely is that people will travel from quite a bit further afield.
 
This isn't to say that they don't have a huge local support - they clearly do. (Seems quite common in former mining and industrial areas in this part of the world. There are similarities with Lens, another small place with an improbably popular club.) But there's a huge support and then there's mathematical unlikelihood.
 
Still, it's not helped them much tonight.

 

Is their average really 18,000? Didn't know it was as much as that. You may well be right about the catchment area, not too familiar with that part of the world to be honest, but I work with a Genk fan who comes from there, I'll ask him. He also confidently predicted they'd be the whipping boys in the CL as they cashed in 3 or 4 of their best players in the summer and are nowhere near as good as they were last season, borne out by their relatively poor start in the league (mid-table 10 points from 7 games, goal difference +1). From tonight's result it looks like he was right, ha! A bang average mid-table Jupiler League side are always going to struggle big time in the CL.

Edited by Cet Homme Charmant
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It is 18,000 this season, was a bit lower last season and admittedly seemed to be bumped up by a couple of late-season games, presumably as they won the title.

 

And yeah, looks like they're in with a real chance of going 0 out of 18 points. But you never know. Lierse managed one point back in 1997-98 (when they still existed), in a home draw with Sporting CP.

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It is 18,000 this season, was a bit lower last season and admittedly seemed to be bumped up by a couple of late-season games, presumably as they won the title.

 

And yeah, looks like they're in with a real chance of going 0 out of 18 points. But you never know. Lierse managed one point back in 1997-98 (when they still existed), in a home draw with Sporting CP.

Think the only chance of them getting a point is at home against Salzburg, and after tonight even that looks very unlikely. Could end up being a bit of a humiliation for them and may lead to Belgium losing an automatic CL spot. I think most Genk fans understood it was inevitable the league winning team would be broken up, even if they weren't happy about it. But given the guaranteed CL income and money received in transfers over the summer, they're justifiably raging that so little of it was re-invested in recruitment.

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Even teams like Copenhagen, Rosenborg and Basel that all built dynasties in large part off CL money see how quickly it can slip away. Copenhagen were usurped by small, provincial teams; Rosenborg the same; and Basel have now been displaced by Young Boys. In the case of Genk, returning to the upper-mid table seems about natural, but it's understandably why it sticks in the craw of their fans.

 

It's a bit of a poisoned chalice for smaller teams, but at the same time, the fans surely wouldn't trade it for anything. Leicester's title win (while much more of a shock than Genk's win) will be remembered for decades, even if the great team was broken up and that they seem unlikely to go to the Champions League again.

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I think you have a point about the CL being a potential poison chalice for wee teams. I guess those teams who make it to the CL have a choice between using the windfall to secure their long-term financial stability, or spending it in an effort to sustain their success. It seems like Genk have gone for the former option, perhaps because they learned from Lierse who went the latter route, which was the seed for their long slow decline and eventual bankruptcy.

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I know very little about Lierse, but I do know that they were owned by an Egyptian company (who also own a football club), Wadi Degla when they went under. I assume from what you're saying that Wadi Degla came in after they spent the family silver.

 

Either way, I'm in two minds about this. I think it's hugely destructive to local leagues when a massive inflex of money comes in and - like in Rosenborg's case - decides the league before kick-off. But it's also not fair to save all the riches of the UEFA tournaments for the big clubs, where it's a drop in the ocean. Maybe a better spread among the leagues that provide qualifiers, rather than just the clubs, is the answer, but then that means the "Eternal Losers" - the list of countries who don't provide UEFA qualifiers, given in the last few pages - fall behind even further.

 

I enjoy watching elite football at the absolute highest level. It is usually the most entertaining expression of the game, as well as its most accomplished. But there needs to be a bit of trickle-down to the rest, right down to Sunday League, because that's where the game is at its purest.

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I know very little about Lierse, but I do know that they were owned by an Egyptian company (who also own a football club), Wadi Degla when they went under. I assume from what you're saying that Wadi Degla came in after they spent the family silver.

That's pretty much exactly how a Lierse fan described it to me.

 

According to him, they spunked away their CL windfall buying and paying ridiculous salaries to big name players, most of whom were at the at the tail end of their careers. Their only tangible return from this player investment was a cup win in 1999, and within just a few years the CL money was gone. They struggled along for a number of years, continuing to live above their means and racking up debts, until the Egyptian mob bought them over..Initially they seemed to have steadied the ship and they were promoted back to the top flight, but the over-spending continued and after a few years they were relegated again, in season 14-15 I think.

 

Due league reconstruction and the introduction of new promotion rules, they were incredibly unfortunate not to get promoted in season 16-17, which I think ended up being the final nail in their coffin. They had invested heavily to secure promotion back to the top flight and they actually had most points over the whole season, which of course in probably every other country would have guaranteed them automatic promotion. However, that season the second tier (now called League 1B) was split into two mini-seasons, with the promotion play-offs being held between the winners of the two mini-seasons. But although they had the most points over the whole season, they didn't finish top in either of the two mini-seasons, so they didn't even make the play-offs. Mental I know, and it ended up costing them dearly. 

 

This is probably a grossly over-simplified account of a 20 year period, I'm sure there must have been many other factors involved as well, but it's the main gist of it.

Edited by Cet Homme Charmant
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Harry Dunn's are 1-0 up.

 

 

ETA: the atmosphere is now electric. Not long now till the stadium gets shut...

 

Feyenoord have a real goalscoring problem, I can see Rangers holding on.

 

Dudelange beat APOEL 4-3 in Nicosia for their first group stage win, and only their second point (they managed a 0-0 draw with Betis last season, amidst five defeats.)

 

Manchester United making hard work of Nur-Sultan Astana, drawing 0-0 at the break, with a few youth players starting.

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