Union Saint-Gilloise

Union Saint-Gilloise begin this season as reigning champions of Belgium. For a club that spent much of the last half-century going the other way, that is the story worth telling first.

Union were relegated from the top flight in 1973 and did not come back for 48 years. They fell as far as the fourth tier in 1980, and in 2012/13 came close to dropping there again — survival arrived only because a rival, KVK Tienen, went bankrupt first. The turnaround started in 2014, when a German businessman, Jürgen Baatzsch, bought the club for a symbolic one euro. Four years later, control passed to Tony Bloom, the British owner of Brighton & Hove Albion. Promotion to the second division followed in 2015, and to the Jupiler Pro League in 2021, after the 48-year absence.

The club's peak came decades earlier. Between 1904 and 1935, Union won 11 Belgian titles. A 60-game unbeaten run in the same era stood as a national record until Anderlecht finally broke it in the 1960s.

Home games are played at the Joseph Marien Stadium, also known as Parc Duden, in Forest, next to Saint-Gilles itself; a 2018 rebuild brought capacity to 9,400.