Birger Verstraete

Ostend produced Birger Verstraete, and it was Club Brugge's academy that shaped him after he left his hometown club as a teenager. He signed his first professional contract with Brugge in 2012, a spell interrupted by a loan to Royal Excel Mouscron, before a January 2017 move took him to KV Kortrijk. Six months later Gent paid €0.85 million for him, and it was that form which earned him a €3.5–4.0 million switch to 1. FC Köln in the summer of 2019 — the biggest transfer of his career.

His time in Germany was not without incident. In May 2020, with football resuming under strict COVID-19 protocols, Verstraete told an interviewer it was "bizarre" that Köln kept training despite positive tests in the squad. He later retracted the comments and apologised.

A loan to Royal Antwerp in 2020–21 turned permanent a year later in a €2.0 million deal. Verstraete was part of the Antwerp squad that won the 2019–20 Belgian Cup, though registration rules tied to the pandemic-delayed final left him ineligible to play in it. A further loan took him to KV Mechelen before he left Belgium for Aris Thessaloniki on a free transfer in September 2023. He returned a year later, joining OH Leuven for €0.2 million in July 2024.

At international level, Verstraete rose through Belgium's youth ranks — including 13 caps and two goals at U19 level — before earning a single senior cap in a friendly against Scotland on 7 September 2018.