The Miracle of St Gilloise

Imagine for a moment a season in which Vallecano Ray finish go up to first division Y finish the league first. That’s what has spent in Belgium this year, with Royale Union St. Gilloise, a club from a suburb of Brussels, having finished the regular league in first place. That nuance, regular, is what has not yet made this humble club champion. Now they must face a final phase of the league for six days together with the second (Bruges), the third (Antwerp) and fourth (Anderlecht). A challenge for which the Royale Union is prepared. “The team has been working together for several years, the block has not changed for years and that is the basis of success”, explains Álex Millán to Diario AS.

Alex Millan He arrived at the age of 16 from Zaragoza to the Villarreal youth academy. After a great season with the yellow subsidiary, offers from the Second Division rained down on him, but he says that “in football, the future is never known” and in August he signed for the witches circle. “Adaptation at the beginning is difficult, but my teammates have always made it easier for me. Physically, it was difficult for me to adapt because I was new to the league. Here they work differently. neither more nor less, different“, he says.

After a good start to the season in which he scored three goals in his first six games, he stopped playing as much and, therefore, scoring. The streak in the league was five points out of a possible thirty-six. The team reacted with a change of coach that stopped trusting Alex so much, but those good games in September had fallen in love with Royale Union St. Gilloise, who at that time were already the leaders: “I couldn’t refuse the offer.”

In Brussels, the club has provided him with a house where he lives alone, although his parents and friends can visit him regularly. In the stadium of the Royale Union, the Joseph Marien makes “let your legs shake” when you play away even though it does not reach ten thousand seats. But the fans press a lot and in several aspects it could be compared with Rayo.

The regularity in the good results is thanks to the collective work and the fruit of a coaching staff that has been in the team since the end of the 2020 quarantine, but it should not be underestimated the talent of players like Casper Nielsen, Dante Vanzeir or Denis Undav. The latter, a 25-year-old German striker of Turkish descenthas been the top scorer in the league with 25 goals. Next season he will play in the Premier League after Brighton bought him last January for €7,000,000 to leave him on loan at his club until the end of the season.

“In Belgium there is a high level, very good players. The League is similar. It’s not that big, but there are teams with a very high salary value. I think it is quite superior to the level that exists in the Second Division,” says Millán.

The curious format that the Pro League has to decide its champion forces them to repeat their success in a very demanding final sprint. For this second and final phase, the teams start with half the points added in the regular league. In this case, the Royale Union will start the first matchday next week with a point advantage over Bruges and five over Antwerp and Anderlecht. But these points could increase when the Belgian Federation decides what happens to the result of the last league game after fans of the Royale Union’s rival Beerschot invaded the pitch and the match was called off. “Now is the icing on the cake,” says an excited Álex Millán.