The Belgian soccer league is dying

The Belgian Football League tries to save a season in which the coronavirus haunts him. With four meetings postponed due to numerous positive cases in the squads, private clubs have growing debts due to lack of revenue, largely due to not selling tickets.

“We will do our best to continue“, declared this weekend to the public radio television the president of the Pro league which organizes professional football competitions in Belgium, Peter croonen.

Belgium is the second country in Europe with the worst data from the pandemic, with a 14-day cumulative incidence on 100,000 inhabitants of 1,289 cases and a weekly advance of 44% in infections.

A curfew has been imposed, restoration throughout the country has been closed and, among other measures, the public attendance to football has been prohibited, whereas until now a capacity of a few thousand fans has been allowed per match, with specific protocols for each club and stadium.

The league, which ended the tournament last year when competition was halted at the start of the pandemic in Europe in March, in recent dates it has been forced to postpone four games (Waasland-Beveren / Ostend, Cercle / Mouscron, Eupen / Malines and Charleroi / Waasland-Beveren), with clubs that exceeded 7 positives per squad. And the streak is expected to continue.

Despite adverse conditions, the Pro League does not throw in the towel. But neither does he put his hand on fire for the continuity of the championship, in a few days in which In Belgium winds are blowing that smell of confinement. “We will try to avoid it, but I imagine that the reality of the virus will haunt us. We will see how far we go, but the goal is to really keep playing“Croonen summarized.

Beyond the puzzle of having to reschedule matches each day, the league knows that clubs are in a financial situation where they can be deprived of very little incomes, especially after the matches have been decreed to be played behind closed doors.

The Tijd newspaper reports that the Anderlecht, one of the oldest clubs in Belgium and coached by Vincent Kompany, it posted record losses of 36 million euros last season and debt of 100 million.

The president assures that he will not go bankrupt, but the investors who support the club have their own financial problems away from football. The main shareholder, Marc Coucke, now initiates a delicate arbitration with the American pharmaceutical giant Perrigo for the sale of an Omega Pharma company for 3,800 million euros.

Beyond Anderlecht, which had already recorded losses of 25 million in the previous year, other clubs were also financially affected before the pandemic. As the Standard de Liège, which in 2018 lost 8.5 million euros, or Antwerp, with more than 13 million in red in that same exercise.

According to the French-speaking public broadcaster, each game behind closed doors means that he will lose around one million euros to Bruges in the Champions League. The only source of secure income for Belgian clubs at the moment is the broadcast rights paid by Eleven Sport, which has a contract with the Pro League to exploit Belgian professional football for around 500 million euros over five years.

But the players' own contact on the field is beginning to make its way into the public debate about the coronavirus and Marc Van Rast, one of the leading virologists in Belgium, has criticized the celebrations of the footballers and has asked for showers and changing rooms to be ventilated. “Close contacts outside of sports (including exuberant cuddle sessions when a goal is scored) could be reduced to a minimum,” the viral disease expert said on Twitter.

Professional football suffers in Belgium, but also the rest of disciplines and amateur sports. Brussels (center) and Wallonia, the most epidemiologically affected regions, have banned competitions and closed all infrastructures. Only those under 12 can continue training.

In Flanders (north) the rule that was decided for the whole country before Wallonia and Brussels will tighten restrictions at regional level, that is, you can continue with the training sessions but only competitions will be allowed for people under 18 years of age and accompanied by a single adult.

New measures are expected this Tuesday and amateur sport could be one of the activities sacrificed to contain the virus, also in Flanders.