Tactically, you have to look at the timing. Raul Florucz is back from suspension, starts on the bench, and after about a quarter of an hour he comes on, earlier than planned, for Mateo Biondic. The game plan goes in the folder. I know that one: on a Sunday, my plan rarely lasts until the twentieth minute.
Then he wins a penalty himself, fouled in the box, and he scores it. Winning it and taking it, same player. At my place, we discuss it for ten minutes, the club delegate (our volunteer with the folder) checks his notes and in the end the keeper takes it. He sorted that out without a meeting.
And then there’s the celebration. Union were the “home” side, but in an empty stadium, without their supporters. Florucz celebrated his goal anyway. “I celebrated my goal as if they were there,” he told Sporza. I got up out of my armchair. Because that gesture, I drill it. My left winger scores, runs to the touchline, nobody there except the lady from the clubhouse bar counting the change. He celebrates anyway. The level in the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) has gone way up, people don’t realise: we’ve been training for the empty stadium for years.
He also said, again to Sporza: “Of course it’s strange. Frankly, no footballer wants to play this kind of match.” I read it out loud to my towel. He doesn’t want them. Me, that’s all I have, plus the slope on pitch 2.
On the penalty, he’s adamant: it was “one hundred per cent”. My dressing room doesn’t need VAR, it has the club delegate, and the delegate is at seventy per cent on everything.
Freddy, your empty touchline is not a European stadium. 7 out of 9. That’s historic. I’m weighing my words.
She’s right on the number. Union have 7 points from 9 and are well placed in the Europa League. Florucz summed up the rest in three words: “That’s my job.” I wrote the line in the folder, team sheets page.
It’s true, we checked: Voetbalkrant.
