Odds on football in Belgium
Surprise teams so far this season:
Charleroi: they improved from last year’s third place as they are sitting in second place right now. They started the season off amazingly by winning 6 games straight but recently slowed down a bit. They lost 2 and tied 2 games out of their last 5. Their trainer Karim Belochine focuses on strong defensive play. This leads to a lot of wins but not as many goals as you would expect from a team that is sitting second in the league. Their strong play at the beginning of the season came from the fact that they didn’t have a lot of trades or players leaving in the offseason.
The attacking duo of Kaveh Rezaei, who already scored 6 goals, and Shamar Nicholson, who has scored four, has to keep performing if they want to have any chance at remaining in the top three.
Beerschot: Beerschot promoted to Belgian’s first division after a long juridical battle in the offseason and now they are in the top 3 in the league. They have only one point less than the top two teams. Their road has been absolutely amazing. They were relegated to Belgium’s third division a few years ago as they went bankrupt and now they are already back at the top. Their games this season have been absolutely crazy. They are the worst defensive team in the league as opponents have been able to score 30 goals against them in only 12 games. The second worst defensive team sits all the way at the bottom of the league in 17th place.
Luckily Beerschot’s offense has been amazing. They are the absolute best in the league as they scored 33 goals. The second best scoring team is Club Brugge who only scored 28 goals and the third best team Genk only scored 22 all season.
The main reason for their offensive prowess is midfielder Raphael Holzhauser who already scored 9 goals and is currently topscorer in the Belgian first division.
Some other amazing scorers on Beerschot’s squad are Tarik Tissoudali and Musashi Suzuki who scored 6 and 5 goals respectively. Hopefully they can keep up their good play throughout the season.
Most disappointing teams of the season
AA Gent: after a beautiful second place finish last season Gen traded topscorer and player of the year Jonathan David to Lille for 32 million euros. The problem is that Gent didn’t invest in new talent and didn’t try to acquire any new impactful players.
Gent started off by playing one of their worst football in years, this lead to the firing of coach Jess Thorup. Despite their new manager Boloni, Gent didn’t turn the corner. Their defensive situation improved a bit by acquiring free-agent goalkeeper Sinand Bolat who already played for Boloni in Antwerp.
On top of their bad performance in the Jupiler Pro league, Gent is absolutely getting destroyed in the Europa League. They lost all 3 games which makes it virtually impossible to still go to reach the knock-out stage.
Their recent results improved a bit as they were able to win 2 and tie 1 in their last five games but a team such as Gent can never be happy with 12th place in Belgium’s first division.
KV Mechelen: Mechelen had a surprisingly good season in 2019-2020 before the season was stopped due to the Coronavirus. Last season’s sixth place finish led to high expectations this season. Mechelen doesn’t seem to be able to repeat last season’s success as they are sitting in 14th place.
They are only 4 points above the relegation zone. Mechelen has to avoid relegation as they only promoted back to Belgium’s first division last season.
Mechelen seems to have rebounded a bit recently as they were able to tie with the top two teams in the league. Mechelen needs to find their rhythm and score more if they want to come back. Right now they have no player who scored more than 3 goals despite having played 11 games.
Maybe the acquiring of ex-Belgium international Steven Defour can help Mechelen get back to the top of the league.