14 February 13, 2022The Sunday Times 2GS
Football
PWDLF APts
Union SG 26 19 3 4 59 21 60
Antwerp 27 16 5 6 47 28 53
Anderlecht 27 13 9 5 58 32 48
Club Bruges26 13 9 4 47 32 48
Gent 27 12 7 8 39 27 43
Charleroi 26 12 7 7 42 33 43
6 After 34 games, the top four
break off into play-offs, starting
with half the points they won in
the regular season (rounded up to
the nearest integer) and then
playing each other home and
awayTOP SIX IN BELGIAN
FIRST DIVISION A
Buendía
keen to
repay faith
shown by
Gerrard
‘When
Gerrard
gives a
message,
every player
believes in
his words.
There’s a lot
of ambition
from him
and the club’
holds inside of himself so much
ambition, such willpower to keep
striving, and the memories of his
difficult journey in football. They fuel
him forwards but at times make a
combustible compound. This was the
case when Villa played Brighton &
Hove Albion in November and, at 0-0
with 16 minutes remaining, Buendía
was substituted. He stomped off and
punched his seat in the dugout.
This was Steven Gerrard’s first
game and many new coaches would
have perceived the opportunity for
an easy “win” in terms of establishing
their authority, and condemned or
even disciplined the player. Not
Gerrard. Where others saw dissent,
he saw a hot-blooded determination
he liked and recognised from South
Americans he played with.
He would soon upgrade Buendía’s
importance to Villa’s playing style,
making him more a central fulcrum
of their attack — a role in which he
has burgeoned, especially since
Philippe Coutinho’s arrival and
Gerrard’s switch to a system based
around two No 10s.
Villa’s player of the month for
January, Buendía is now behind only
John McGinn for key passes, through
balls, xA (expected assists) and
completed passes into the box for hisBuendía took time to
settle at Aston Villa
but is now thriving in
Gerrard’s attackWhen Emi Buendía was 11, he
received an offer he could not refuse,
though it guaranteed pain and a
fractured childhood. Would he leave
his family in Argentina to sign for
Real Madrid? He said yes, took the
plane and found himself 12,000
kilometres from home, connected to
his tearful parents only by phone.
When Buendía reached 13, he was
asking himself whether he was even
good enough to be a professional
footballer — merely a substitute for
his age-group team in Madrid, he
fought an urge to quit and fly home.
By 14, he had moved on to Getafe
where an influential academy coach
did not rate him and consigned him
in the “B” youth team. By 20, he was
on loan at Cultural Leonesa, playing
for a little side newly promoted to
Spain’s second division.
Each time there were doubts he
kept going because of a mantra he
voiced to himself during the bleakest
moments of his development: “No,
Emi, 12,000 kilometres, you left
everyone to make this dream come
true. I can’t stop here. I fight.’ ”
All this is why February 1 was a day
of days, a day of firsts, for Aston
Villa’s soft-spoken but hard-mindedJonathan Northcroft
magician. Argentina played Colombia
in a World Cup qualifier in Córdoba
and, ten minutes from the end, the
substitute board went up — Lionel
Scaloni, coach of La Albiceleste, was
withdrawing Giovanni Lo Celso and
sending Buendía on to the pitch.
“My first [appearance] for the
national team and the first game in
my life playing in Argentina, my own
country,” Buendía says, eyes glowing
as he relives the debut. “When I
heard the manager call me to come in
and get ready [to go on], I think
everything came into my head: every
step of my life in football, my mum,
my dad, Juan Esnáider (his former
coach and mentor) and everyone
who has been important to me.
“And in the last, maybe, 30
seconds, waiting to get onto the field,
I felt for the first time in
football... nervous.”
We did a piece last season when
Buendía was in the Sky Bet
Championship with Norwich City,
and he revealed, then, his burning
goal to become an Argentina player.
“I remember that interview because I
don’t do many, but we talked about
my dreams, about representing my
country. And today I can say I did it,”
he says, smiling.
Quiet, he may be, but Buendíateam. He admits that, after his
£33 million move from Norwich, “I
had a struggle in the beginning. It was
difficult for me, not in terms of
settling down with the club — because
everyone helped me a lot — but to feelmouth). His stats suggested unusual
quality on the ball, for one with such
physical presence.
And then there is the person. Bur-
gess took an unusual route into pro-
fessional football, signing for Middles-
brough after impressing in a trial
arranged by the coach of the team he
captained — University of Birming-
ham. Burgess was halfway through a
history degree, which he completed
at University of Teesside, graduating
with a First. His dissertation on the
naval arms race between Britain and
Germany before the first world war
was put forward for a national prize.
A vegan, environmentalist and
Labour Party member, he spoke at a
Sir Keir Starmer campaign meeting in
Portsmouth, when Starmer was run-
ning for Labour leader, and has spo-
ken of entering politics or marine con-
servation after his playing career.
For Union, his worldliness madeever, Union just keep rolling on
through the many obstacles that are
expected to trip them.
Burgess, who plays on the left of
their back three, typifies Union’s
clever recruitment. As with Brighton,
it is data-driven but O’Loughlin is also
big on character and group chemistry,
researching in detail whether a player
will fit the squad’s dynamic and the
club’s ethos.
A close look at Burgess
uncovers pedigree: he was in
Arsenal’s academy and tri-
alled with West Ham
United and Tottenham
Hotspur, later joining Mid-
dlesbrough and then
becoming a leading per-
former wherever he
played (Hartle-
pool United,
Peterborough
United, Ports-Union have hit the
heights since Tony
Bloom of Brighton
& Hove Albion
got involvedparallel with Leicester City is foreign
ownership. Union are co-controlled
by Tony Bloom, owner of Brighton &
Hove Albion, and his friend and busi-
ness partner Alex Muzio.
The idiosyncratic format of the Bel-
gian championship play-off — the top
four meet home and away, with each
team starting with half the points they
won in the regular season, rounded
up to the nearest integer — means
Union’s path to the title is not
straightforward despite their
lead. Rather like Leicester in the
2015-16 Premier League, how-JONATHAN
NORTHCROFT
Football Correspondent
I
t was not a normal transfer gam-
bit but then again Royale Union
Saint-Gilloise are not a normal
football club. Out of the blue,
Christian Burgess received a mes-
sage on Instagram. It was from an
analyst purporting to work for
the Brussels side: how would
Burgess fancy swapping League One
for the Belgian second tier.
After confirming the approach was
genuine, Burgess and his representa-
tives began checking out Union and a
pitch from their Limerick-born sport-
ing director, Chris O’Loughlin, proved
persuasive. In July, 2020 Burgess —
Portsmouth’s reigning player of the
season — left English football to begin
his new adventure and 19 months
later the 30-year-old, 6ft 5in centre
half is contemplating the Champions
League.
Union were promoted in his first
campaign and in his second are the
shock, runaway leaders of Belgium’s
First Division A — seven points clear of
second-placed Antwerp with a game
in hand and eight to go before the
competition moves into a play-offs
phase. Last week, Union won at Ant-
werp for the first time in 64 years and
the week before they completed a first
league double over Anderlecht in 70
years: all this with the third smallest
budget in the top flight and nine regu-
lar starters who were with them in the
second tier.
They are being called the “Belgian
Leicester” and the comparisons are
uncanny. “The players are misfits
from other teams or late bloomers,
they have unity and a very dynamic,
hard running style. They even have
[in Felice Mazzù] an Italian manager —
or Belgian born to Italian parents —
who is a very optimistic and warm
character,” Bart Lagae, sportswriter
for De Standaard explains. AnotherLEICESTER
Is the miracle of
about to
repeat in
BELGIUM?
Echoes of 2015-16
Premier League
in Union fairytale