FC United will kick off our 2022-23 Fenix Trophy campaign under the lights at Broadhurst Park on Tuesday 15th November as we begin our defence of the trophy by taking on fellow fan-owned side KSK Beveren from Belgium in the first match in Group A.
The Belgian author Georges Simenon reckoned that “the smell of a freshly opened bottle of beer is the smell of my country” so a bottle or two of Two Hoots golden ale under the St Mary’s Road End terrace should be the perfect way to welcome our fellow supporter-owners to Moston for their Fenix Trophy debut.
The town of Beveren lies in the Dutch speaking area of Flanders that’s better known for its bone-shaking cobbled classic cycle races - and for producing some of the world’s finest road cyclists like their latest lycra-clad superstar Wout Van Aert - than it is for football. Although FC United did once have its very own Belgian footballing superstar, of course, in the form of Tunde Owolabi who was born just up the road from Beveren in Antwerp. And Koninklijke Sportkring Beveren (Royal Sporting Club of Beveren) boasts a fine footballing pedigree.
The club enjoyed its most successful period in the late seventies and early eighties when it was twice Belgian champions and also won two Belgian Cups. It also has a rich European tradition having beaten Inter Milan in the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1979 before eventually losing to Barcelona in the semi-finals.
Perhaps their most famous ex-player is Jean-Marie Pfaff who was Belgium’s goalkeeper during the 1982 and 1986 World Cups and made more than three hundred appearances for Beveren before joining Bayern Munich. And ex-Liverpool ‘supersub’ David Fairclough spent three seasons at Beveren in the late eighties.
More recently the club was also home to a talented generation of players from the Ivory Coast including Yaya Touré, Emmanuel Eboué and Gervinho and this multicultural team even managed to qualify for the group stages of the Europa League in 2004 – KSK Beveren’s last European campaign until now.
Since those ‘golden years’ the club’s history has seen more plot twists than one of Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels and its ultimately led to the formation of the supporter-owned club that has now entered the Fenix Trophy.
KSK Beveren experienced financial problems in the late nineties and almost went bankrupt in 2010 and, as a result, it chose not apply for a professional license for the 2010-11 season, instead opting for automatic relegation to the Belgian third division. The club was taken over by nearby Red Star Waasland and became Waasland-Beveren but continued to play its matches at the Freethiel Stadion in Beveren.
Hundreds of supporters boycotted Waasland-Beveren and instead decided to establish a new club in Belgium’s lowest division called YB SK Beveren – “Yellow Blue SupportersKring Beveren” – the first and still the only supporter-owned club in Belgium. The yellow and blue name referred to the colours of KSK Beveren and the phoenix club was viewed by its founders as the resurrection of KSK Beveren from its ashes. They had taken inspiration from the likes of AFC Wimbledon, Enfield Town and FC United – indeed some FC fans may remember board members and supporters of Beveren visiting Gigg Lane in April 2011 and again in March 2012 for our home match against Stocksbridge Park Steels.
The club is democratically run, like FC United, on a “one member, one vote” basis with anyone able to become a co-owner at a cost of 35 euros per season. And, as at FC, members are actively involved in taking the most important decisions about the future of their football club and are able to stand for the board and elect board members.
The new club played its first friendly match in March 2011 and secured registration from the Belgian Football Association to begin playing football in the 2011-12 season. Unfortunately the municipality of Beveren announced that there was no place for the new club in its home town so it was forced to play matches in its first season in the neighbouring town of Sint-Niklaas. But in 2012 YB SK Beveren began playing its home games on a former training ground of KSK Beveren near the Freethiel Stadion.
In June this year an historic agreement was reached with Waasland-Beveren for YB SK Beveren to take over the league registration of KSK Beveren and for Waasland-Beveren to be renamed SK Beveren and share the original club badge of KSK with the supporter-owned club. This move marked the end of a decade long cold war between the two clubs and also recognised the importance of fan ownership in football. And, finally, the fan-owned club was able return to its original home – the beloved Freethiel Stadion in September this year – a hugely significant moment for the club that sees itself as the rightful heirs of the original KSK Beveren.
The club currently play in the first division of the East Flanders provincial league (Eerste Provinciale Oost-Vlaanderen) - an amateur league at the sixth tier of the Belgian football pyramid – and are now very much looking forward to making their debut in the Fenix Trophy in Manchester.
The format of the tournament has changed slightly this season with nine teams competing in three groups of three with each team playing the two other teams in their group home and away. The third team in FC United’s group is Cuenca-Mestallistes from Valencia. The top team from each group, together with the best placed runner-up, will then compete in a finals weekend next June – with semi-finals and a final to decide the 2023 winner of the Fenix Trophy. The dates of FC’s other three group matches and also the venue for the semi-finals and final will be announced in due course.
So get yourself down to Broadhurst Park on Tuesday 15th November for the start of this season’s Fenix Trophy campaign – it’s a 7.45pm kick off. In a new initiative this year, anyone under the age of 18 who is accompanied by an adult will be able to gain free admission to our Fenix Trophy home matches. The Real Madrid president Florentino Perez recently claimed that “young people are no longer interested in football” – we beg to differ and we’d like to give as many youngsters as possible the opportunity to experience live European football.
Bring a mate or family member – perhaps even someone who hasn’t been to FC before. The Premier League will have shut down for the World Cup but you can still come and watch two supporter-owned clubs battle it out in European competition in Manchester. A European night under the lights is always special.