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Author: badgerboy
Date: 26-10-2006, 16:26

Greetings to all Belgian fans.

I have a few questions about how club mergers (of which there seem to have been a lot over the years) are perceived by the fans in Belgium?

Primarily, is the club resulting from a merger seen as a brand new club or a continuation of one of the old ones? Is there a general rule or does it vary from case to case?

I know about the "matricule" - I found a marvellous link via Wikipedia but also know that the "official view" in such cases doesn't always follow the "fan view".

I love the story about how Gent got their nickname by the way.

OK. Specific examples. For the moment these only involve clubs that have appeared in Europe (according to Bert's excellent list that is).

1. An easy one I guess (though it ruins my "general rule" of thinking of the merger of two "established" clubs as the creation of a brand new one). Standard Liege & Seraing in 1996. I assume has to be seen as Seraing, although a very old club themselves, being swallowed by Standard.

2. 1973 (& 2002). First - Daring Club Molenbeek (formerly Daring Club Brussels) merged with Royal Racing White taking the "matricule" of the latter to become RWD Molenbeek. Then in 2002 - another fusion - this time with KFC Strombeek - to become FC Brussels. Again the "matricule" of the younger, less renowned club, was kept - I think for logistical reasons. So, "legally" FC Brussels are a continuation of KFC Strombeek but in reality are they seen this way, as a brand new club, or in fact as a "moral continuation" of either Royal Racing White (1909) or even the more "historically impressive" Daring Club (1895).

3. 1988. Merger of KFC Winterslag & K. Waterschei Thor to form KRC Genk. They've kept the registration of Winterslag despite this being the slightly younger club. (I wont complete my questions for each entry as I guess (hope?) they are obvious).

4. 1999. Beerschot VAC & Germinal Ekeren into Germinal Beerschot. Again the "registration identity" of the younger club (Ekeren) was carried on.

5. 2001. KSV Waregem & Zultse VV into Zulte-Waregem. Again, following a trend it seems, it's the younger club that continues on paper.

Author: drewvkamp
Date: 26-10-2006, 16:58

My understanding is that when two Belgian clubs merge, they keep the matricule of the club in the higher-placed division (assuming that they want to play in the higher-placed division).

For example, when Germinal (no. 3530) merged with Beerschot (no. 13), Germinal was in the 1st division, while Beerschot was in the third. So although Beerschot had the more distinguished history, taking that number would have consigned the merged entity to the third division (the graveyard of Belgian teams).

Zulte (no. 5381) and Waregem (no. 4451) is a different case. In that case, Waregem had the better history (cup winners in 1974) and the same league placement (third division). They also had more debts and less cash, so this "merger" was more of a takeover by the club with the healthier finances.

I've learned that things in Belgium can get pretty murky -- it's all the paperwork in multiple languages...

Author: rakke
Date: 26-10-2006, 17:18

In all the examples you gave (except Standard & Genk), there's an old club with a lot of fans and bad management. They've been successful in the past (Beerschot, RWDM, Waregem) but have gone to lower divisions and/or bankrupt. Almost the same happened with KV Mechelen 2 (?) years ago.
They merge with a neighbouring (mostly younger as you already noticed) team that has good management but small fan-basis (like Germinal Ekeren, who had a very good team but never managed to attract more than 2000-3000 people). As a result, there's always some opposition from the fans of both sides, but they mostly can't keep themselves from attending the new club anyway (you all know what football, or lack of it, does to a fan)

Re: Questions about Belgian club histories...
Author: badgerboy Date: 26-10-2006, 18:01	So would I be right in thinking that - regardless of what the "paper trail" might say fans in Belgium would generally see the "new" club as more of an extension of the older traditional one?

Author: modano
Date: 26-10-2006, 20:07
Edited by: modano
at: 26-10-2006, 20:09

@ Badgerboy:

First of all most people don't consider Standard - Seraing to be a merger, it was more a take-over of Seraing. There's in fact a new team in Seraing which plays at the same ground in the 3rd division.

RWDM is also a bit of an exception. I think they hold the world record for most mergers (FC Brussels is sometimes called Racing-White-Daring-Molenbeek-Strombeek-Brussels by it's opponents

). Nowadays few people even remember Daring or Racing, so it is seen as a new-look RWDM.

So let's just consider the 3 other examples. In 2 of them you're absolutely right when you say that the new club is seen as an extension of the traditional one: Germinal Beerschot as a continuation of Beerschot and Zulte-Waregem as the heir of Waregem.
I think for both cases the explanation is very simple: Beerschot and Waregem had a lot of supporters, contrary to Germinal Ekeren and Zultse VV. They also had a larger stadium, so that home games were played at their grounds.

In the Genk-case, Winterslag and Waterschei had the same amount of supporters and they were about equally succesfull. Maybe that's why it is the most successfull merger in Belgian football history.

As for mergers in Belgian football in general, they are considered in a lot of cases as a necessary evil, but eventually most people come to terms with the new-founded club (although there are exceptions). In my part of the country (east of Brussels) all the major teams (KVK Tienen, OH Leuven, KVO Aarschot, KTH (now FC) Diest) are mergers.

The eldest mergers even go back to the 19th century: Athletic Club de Bruxelles merging with Running Club de Bruxelles into Athletic & Running Club de Bruxelles (wow, a lot of thinking to come up with that name); Brugsche FC and FC Brugeois into FC Brugeois (now Club Brugge), although it can also be considered a take-over.