A complicated set of tiebreakers, special Belgium edition

I've been to Belgium and its soccer league has playoffs that are well, you'll see

On our recent foray to the Netherlands, we took a side trip to Belgium. For logistical reasons, we just stayed in the Northern Belgium city of Antwerp, which is a nice place to go if you want to buy uncut diamonds, but may not hold the charms of Bruges or have all the cosmopolitan appeal of Brussels. It does have a lot of chocolate, so it ended up as a net positive.

For a trip overseas, I like to get a souvenir from the local soccer (or football if you prefer) club. So we Ubered out to the Bosuil Stadion, the home of Royal Antwerp FC.

Although, Royal Antwerp is one of the oldest clubs in Belgium, founded in 1888 and its nickname is “The Great Old.” And that’s not a translation. The nickname is written in English, which is the case for a lot of European teams, many of whom were founded by English expats.¹

Antwerp had a pretty good year finishing third in Belgium’s Jupiler Pro League. (The league is sponsored by a beer company). Genk finished first based on goal difference over Union-Saint Gilloise. Genk is a medium sized city in the east of Belgium (Limburg), and frequently confused with Gent (sometimes spelled Ghent, and in really old days it was called Gaunt, as in medieval English historical figure John of Gaunt), a bigger city near Antwerp in East Flanders.² USG plays in a suburb of Brussels. Club Brugge (or Bruges if you prefer) finished fourth.³ Antwerp has won the fewest championships out of the bunch, just four, and none since 1957. Union-Saint Gilloise has won 11 times, but hasn’t won since 1935. Genk last won in 2019.

However, no one has won the league title yet. Because unlike most other European football leagues, Belgium has… PLAYOFFS!

Well, they’re sort of playoffs. It’s more like a handicapped postseason tournament.

So, the teams finished this way

1. Genk - 75

2. Union-Saint Gilloise - 75

3. Royal Antwerp -72

4. Club Brugge - 59

These four teams will play each other home and away to finish up the league. However, it’s not an elimination tournament. What is done is that each team’s regular season point total is divided in half (rounding up) and then adding that amount to the points that the teams win in their remaining six matches.

So, the standings are

1. Genk - 38

2. Union-Saint Gilloise - 38

3. Royal Antwerp - 36

4. Club Brugge - 30

With just six matches to play, it’s likely that the champ will come from the top three. Brugge, the defending champions, would need to win all six matches to have a chance and then hope that the top three play a lot of draws. The top two get to go to the Champions League. The third place team goes to the Europa Conference League.

Brugge had a surprisingly good start in the Champions League, but played poorly domestically. Then they fired their manager and hired an English manager, Scott Parker, and he was even worse. And then Parker got fired. But the team still liked him and used this photo of him on the team website announcing his dismissal.

But, there are twists. Royal Antwerp is playing Mechelen on April 30 in the Belgian Cup, aka the Croky Cup. (Croky is a brand of potato chips.) If Antwerp wins that, it would advance to the Europa League (one rung above the Conference League), unless it qualifies for the Champions League.

There is another playoff competition among the teams that finished fifth through eighth. It has the same setup as the playoffs among the top four. The winner of that playoff series may or may not play a playoff game for a spot in the Europa Conference League.

Then I read about the relegation playoffs and I began to weep. They are relegating three teams this year and only promoting one because they are switching from an 18 team league to a 16 team league.

Is Belgian club football good? Not particularly. The best Belgian players end up on the squads of bigger clubs in other countries. Last Thursday, there were three Belgian teams with a chance to move on to the semifinals of either the Europa League or the Europa Conference League. They all lost. Union-Saint Gilloise lost in the Europa League and Gent (with its highly offensive logo) and Anderlecht both washed out in the Europa Conference League. To my surprise, most of the playoff matches will be televised live in the U.S. by ESPN+. Still can’t see the Dodgers play on TV though.

And why do the Belgians use a playoff system like this? I don’t really know the answer, but presumably it is supposed to drive up interest in late season matches and create chances for different teams to win. But, since 2009 (first year of the playoffs), only four teams have won the championship. Most European leagues are dominated by a small group of teams (2-4 at most) who have any chance of finishing first.

And since you have made it this far, I will leave you with this picture of a castle made entirely of chocolate at Chocolate Nation.

1. Another example of this is the Spanish Basque football squad Athletic Bilbao. Under Franco, the team had to call itself Atletico Bilbao, because he really disliked the Basques and their lanague, but it was able to change back to its original name. The team usually just calls itself “Athletic” and differentiates it from the much larger “Atletico Madrid FC.”

2. And a damn good place to end the War of 1812. Genk is also called Racing Genk. And its teams are sometimes called The Smurfs because of their blue uniforms.

3. One thing to keep in mind about Belgium is that any city you’ve heard of there likely goes by a different name locally.