Royale Union Saint-Gilloise

Union Saint-Gilloise
	Union Saint-Gilloise
Basic data
Surname	Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Seat	Brussels , Belgium
founding	November 1, 1897
Colours	blue yellow
president	Alex Muzio
Website	rusg.brussels
First soccer team
Head coach	vacant
Venue	Stade Joseph Marien
Places	8,000
league	Division 1B
2019/20	4th place - overall table
home	Away

The Royale Union Saint-Gilloise is a Belgian football club from the municipalities of Saint-Gilles / Sint-Gillis and Forest / Vorst, which are part of the Brussels-Capital Region .

history

The club, founded on November 1, 1897, is one of the oldest still existing football clubs in Belgium. In 1904 Union Saint-Gilloise won the first of eleven championships so far. Seven of the title wins come before the First World War . In 1913 and 1914 he also won the Belgian Cup. After the eighth championship in 1923, the club had to wait ten years before succeeding again. From 1933 to 1935 Union Saint-Gilloise set a record that is still valid today when they survived 60 games in a row without defeat. As a result, you became national champion in 1934 and 1935. Since then, the club has been waiting for a title win.

After the Second World War , Union Saint-Gilloise also played internationally. However, the trade fair trophy was not related to the table, but participation was only guaranteed by the local trade fair location. It even managed to participate in the semi-finals in the competition held from 1958 to 1960, but Birmingham City proved to be too strong in the two games.

In 1965 he was relegated from the First Division . The low point in the club's history was reached in 1981 when they were relegated to the fourth and thus lowest division. In 1983 he was promoted to the third division and in 1984 (for two years) was promoted to the second division , to which the club also belonged in 1996/97 and from 2004 to 2008. After a few years in the semi-professional third division and a just barely prevented relegation to the fourth, Union Saint-Gilloise managed to return to the second division in 2015.

In the first season in the 2nd division the club reached the 6th place, which he qualified for the new Division 1B with only eight clubs. In the season 16/17 you could reach 4th place in the overall standings with a point lead, so you didn't have to take part in the relegation round.

In the next season they finished 6th in the overall standings and in the following relegation round with five points ahead of 3rd place, so that Union Saint-Gilloise remained in Division 1B. In the 2018/19 season , the club came third in the overall standings and in the following play-offs of the first division , in which they were able to take part, with four points behind the group winners in second place.

On June 19, 2019, the contract with the previous coach Elsner was terminated at his request, because he moved to the French club Amiens SC . On July 1, 2019, the new coach Thomas Christiansen was announced with a contract term of two years. Union Saint-Gilloise has the option of extending the contract for another year. After the 2019/20 season , in which Royale Union took 4th place in the overall table, the collaboration with Christiansen was prematurely terminated in mid-May 2020.

Board

From 2014 onwards, the majority of the shares in Royale Union Saint-Gilloise were in the hands of the President Jürgen Baatzsch , a German entrepreneur with Belgian residence. In June 2018 he sold his shares to the English businessman Tony Bloom . At the same time, Baatzsch was named honorary president. At the beginning of August, the association's board of directors elected Alex Muzio , who owns a minority stake in the association, as the new president.