Anderlecht lost 0-4 at Gent. Three goals after the 73rd minute. Gent are top, nine points clear. I read this at the chip shop on Monday, in my weekly. The score hadn’t changed.
After the match, Vitor Bruno said, according to VoetbalPrimeur: “We can still win points back, but we must not look at first place. Rather at the team that is fourth.”
Fourth place. In 1980, nobody looked at it. You looked at first, then at last. Between the two, there was life. Today a manager names it out loud, after a 0-4, as a destination. In my day, fourth was where you ended up. Nobody aimed for it. You arrived there the way you arrive at a bus stop in the rain.
I’m not criticising. I’m comparing.
He also said: “The biggest mistake we could make is to look further than that. You have to understand where we stand and what our level is. In these matches, you see that there is still a gap with the teams at the top.” It is an honest sentence. I read it twice. One rarely hears a manager say where he is. Usually they say where they are going.
He refuses to defend with five at the back. He keeps his risky approach. That, I approve of. Five defenders, in 1980, was a team that was afraid. You could see it from the terrace, in the pouring rain.
Five at the back is what I do when the club delegate has forgotten we’re playing on a slope.
He named Charleroi and Union as teams to watch. Then he said Anderlecht must first look at itself. A club that looks at itself. Forty years ago, that was called a dressing room. Well. It’s the times.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
