Arsenal and Berchem, two different worlds and yet so similar « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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By Walter Broeckx
I must warn you when you start reading that this starts a bit far away from the Emirates but we will end up there by the end.
I think I have mentioned before but I do follow my own local team in Flanders. And in that article I reported that my local team “Berchem” had won the first of a midseason league table. In the lower leagues in Belgium they make up a separate league table after every 10 games and the team who is first in that table gets the right to enter the play offs at the end of the season to win promotion to a higher league.
My local team, Berchem, won the first mid-season league table after 10 games. And in the second period of 10 games…they also were on top. And last week they could win the title in an away game and they won the game with a 0-3 score.
It was of course the start of wild celebrations. I couldn’t make it to the game as I had to do my own game but I went to our old stadium to see the players arrive on top of the bus. And no it wasn’t an open bus, but they just had climbed upon the roof.
So being crowned champions already the week before they still had to play 2 games. Last weekend we played our final home game. All was set for a massive celebration. Now you cannot compare this to crowds for Arsenal. But according to newspapers reports we got a crowd for that game something of around 3.000 supporters. For what was a game with no real meaning. The club had invited players from all the championship years from the past and they got honoured before the game, together with the current champions.
When the game started nobody expected a lot. No more pressure, all being done and settled. Only some pride to play for. And my boy, our Lions (the nickname of Berchem) produced one of the best performances I had ever seen. We blew the opposition away and won with 6-0. (Six – nil yeah). I recorded the last goal and the start of the celebrations and you can see it here.
After the match we celebrated the title in a tent that was build inside the stadium (for the first time I know the benefit of an athletic track around a football field). And in those celebrations I rediscovered a bit of why I love this little club from the suburbs of Antwerp and also why I love Arsenal.
My local club Berchem went bust almost 8 years ago. That season we won the title and would have gone up to the 2nd division of football in Belgium. Only one division lower than what was our home division for a very very long time. But our president, a guy with lots of money, was found doing some things outside the law – you know how it is. And instead of going to the 2nd division we went bankrupt and went down the divisions back to the 4th division.
The survival of the club was not secure for many years as every week they found new dead bodies and debts we still had to pay for.
The current board could have stopped and called it a day. They didn’t and with what happened to us in the back of their heads they started building a new club, a new team. And this is a first link with Arsenal: they try to do it within their own means. If we can’t afford a player, we will not buy, we will not pay his wages. On a very small scale compared to Arsenal but this is the self sustaining model all over. And I am grateful for the board to keep on working in that way. They will not risk the future of the club to win a title or to win promotion. Believe me when you had to be afraid to see in the papers if you club would survive you never want such a thing again.
Now as football in the lower leagues in Belgium is very different from life at Arsenal, it is easy for us supporters of Berchem to speak with the players. They go to the same canteen after the game as the supporters so you can talk with them and have a drink with them. I know one of the players personally as he is family to one of my daughters in law, so it is all very friendly and very much a family club.
And Berchem is a club with a real heart for people. A caring club, a warm club. We have this supporter named Rene. He is a person of around 60 with some kind of mental handicap. He is there for every game, home or away, I think he is there on every training session (they are open to the public) and he is shouting and supporting the team every second of the game. At Berchem he is known as Reneke (a typical Antwerp habit of adding the “ke” behind someone’s name as a sign of sympathy in this case) “Gingerbread”.
Now if they say in Dutch that you have a “heart of gingerbread” is meaning that you are a person with a heart of gold. So the name Reneke Gingerbread is saying that Rene has a heart of gold. He walks the streets almost every day to collect money for Berchem to build a new stadium. Our stadium is one of the biggest in the lower leagues but it is old. So Reneke Gingerbread is collecting money for the club. No one asks him to do it, he just does it with that big heart of his.
And at the end of the celebrations when the best player of the season award was given the president of Berchem sport (our local Hill-Wood) took the stage and the microphone and announced that Berchem would also give a special prize for the “best supporter of the season”. And he called for Rene Gingerbread to enter the stage to help him with this. And then he said that the local bakery that sponsors our club and the board had decided that Reneke Gingerbread was chosen as the “best supporter of the season”. Big cheers from all the other supporters and at first Reneke didn’t even get it that it was him who was chosen.
And then they offered him the trophy that went with this and they gave him a big cake in the shape of a stadium. The look on Reneke his face was something I cannot describe in words. Just let me say that is was so heart warming to see the joy of this person who hadn’t been treated nice in life in a way… For me this simply was the best part of the whole title celebration. How my local club was willing to give special attention to some more or less disabled person in those hours showed what a warm club I support over here.
Talking later that evening with some friends whom I know for more than 40 years going to our local club we agreed that our club is the most sympathetic club in the world. We have known more misery than joy and when we have a moment to celebrate we party like its 1999. But we know that maybe in a few years time we will face new tough times. Because that is the way football goes. And certainly for our local club.
I then sat on my own in the stadium to find a bit of fresh air and to think some things over. My thoughts wandered from the old Berchem stadium to the Emirates. My thoughts wandered from my mates at Berchem with whom I have celebrated titles but also cried when we went down to the nice people I have learned to know in London. My thoughts wandered towards all those we had lost along that long time.
And I thought to myself that I am very lucky man. Not just for this title celebration that day. But because I have the luck to support two teams that are trying to do things in the right way. I have the luck to support two teams that are trying to be generous to people who don’t have all the possibilities healthy people have. I have the luck to have made friendships that seem to last forever with people from those clubs.
And this is in a way what football is all about for me. Okay I will take the title or cup when it comes along. But for me football and the two clubs I support is something more than the title or a cup. It is about how we should stand in life. Football should be about building not just a team, but maybe also a better world. A world where all of us can celebrate and enjoy the coming together at our games. A win is great, a loss is terrible but at the end of the day next week is another game. But when it comes to friendships and human relations this goes so much further than the latest result.
So I sat there on my own in the stand, looking at those thousands of happy people celebrating our title and that old song entered my head and I still can’t get rid of it: “Ooooohh, what a lucky man I am.”
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