KVC Westerlo

The founders in Westerlo were students, not businessmen: in 1917 a group of them put together Sportkring De Bist Westerlo, a club that folded within five years. Bist Sport picked up the thread in 1931, and when it took the name Sportkring Westerlo two years later, on 5 September 1933, the Belgian federation entered it in the register under number 2024 — even after a 1942 merger with the local side Den Bisto reshaped it into V.C. Westerlo.

National football stayed out of reach until 1969, when Westerlo finally reached Belgium's Third Division. The town arrived there only in 1997, a year after the club earned the honorific "Koninklijke" and became K.V.C. Westerlo. The trophy sits from 2000/01, when the club won the Belgian Cup and with it a route into the UEFA Cup. Westerlo has climbed back out of the second tier to reclaim its place among the elite.

Het Kuipje holds 8,035 people, and the yellow and blue of "De Kemphanen" — the fighting cocks — has stayed the club's identity since.

No one embodies that better than Toni Brogno.