“All life is cyclical: 49 years ago I saw my first cup final with the loving colors and we also lost it 1-0 against a Brussels club”

There is no shortage of annoyance this week either. The Eurovision Song Contest is ravaging Europe and it is really difficult to ignore it. What was a sometimes acceptable song competition last century has today degenerated into a hideous freak show in garish colors. A certain degree of mental disorder is a precondition for participation. This stupidity is not limited to the event itself: in Malmö, where the display of curiosities takes place, two wappies this week felt it necessary to publicly burn a Palestinian flag and a book that is sacred to about a billion people on our planet. . That’s how it is: there are normal lunatics and there are dangerous lunatics.

In our country, civilization has reached a new milestone: animal rights are enshrined in the Constitution. A loud hurray is in order here. Now the rights of unborn people.

Club Brugge just missed out on reaching the European final and my club didn’t win the Cup either. I rarely comment on game situations, but I make an exception for the Union goal: how little decisively we defended in that phase! The whole event had a high level of déjà vu as far as I was concerned: 49 years ago I saw my first cup final with the loving colors and that was also against a Brussels club and we lost it 1-0 after a disappointing match. All life is cyclical and the sporting life is no different. At a time like this it is appropriate to return to the last verse of the club song with the immortal lyrics of Jos Lahou. I know him by heart because our peripeties have so often forced me to think about it: ‘And sometimes a fearful day comes when we are not lucky, yet we sing like the plag’, where ‘plag’ is a one-off conjugation has the sole merit of rhyming with ‘day’.

Like club life, coaching life is also cyclical and Mark van Bommel came to the end of his journey in Deurne in a completely natural way. The course he has run is difficult to improve and it is normal that he wants to capitalize on his status. He can now take his chance on the really big stage.

In the end, the wheel of fortune turns for everyone and while we have returned from the depths of misery to the main stage, our Walloon counterpart Standard de Liège is in free fall, and no one knows where it will end. These are undoubtedly days of desperation for the loyal fans, but there is still no reason for despair. The really great ones always come back, even if it takes a full century. Even more than my club, Union is an exponent of this axiom: their previous cup win dates back to 110 years ago.

In the frayed edge of the many sports news, a small message attracted attention this week: the great César Luis Menotti passed away. At the age of 85, he became the chain-smoking Argentine national coach, winner of the 1978 World Cup, the sympathetic face of an antipathetic regime.

In France, a new chapter was written in the sometimes shaky relationship between players and supporters. Troyes AC was relegated for the second year in a row and that caused great dissatisfaction among the supporters. A number of angry fans threw fireworks on the field in the Stade de l’Aube, but four players did not like that. They picked the torches out of the grass and threw them back into the supporters’ box. The four have now been suspended by the club. Players who throw fireworks into the stands of their own fans: you should never think that you have experienced everything.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was still in France on a state visit. And you can think whatever you want about his French colleague Macron, but he does have a sense of symbolism. For once he received his distinguished guest and his wife not in the Louvre or Notre Dame, but at the top of the Tourmalet. The most iconic mountain in the history of the Tour de France as the backdrop for a political summit meeting. That is really beautiful. It is not clear whether Xi Jinping was impressed. But it remains a good find.

Finally, there was bad news about another monument in France: the blades of the Moulin Rouge in Paris broke off and crashed for no apparent reason. No one was injured and the Games are not yet underway, but the wappies among us will agree that it is a bad omen.