Cercle Brugge 1 La Louviere 3

 At the weekend, we had a bumper weekend in Brussels and Brugge. Apart from beer and culture there was also the chance to see a relegation scrap between Cercle and La Louviere. It offered a trip to the Jan Breydel Stadium, which they share with Club Brugge and is much maligned by visiting fans in European competition. It was apparently renovated last in 2016, but it looks like it was longer ago than that.

Anyway, fun was still to be had and going to see a game in a new place is always a good experience. Cercle are the second team in Brugge but have had their moments. They have won the Belgian league 3 times - albeit the last time being in 1930. They have also won the cup twice, the last time in 1985. As recently as last season , they reached the Round of 16 in the Conference League, but avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth. After this result, they will be playing in the relegation round again and hoping to stay up somehow.

Similarly La Louviere are also close to the relegation round, but may be able to avoid it depending on how they and Leuven do next week. 

La Louviere also have a long, but far less illustrious past. Interestingly, they were originally also called Cercle (Cercle Couillet) and wear similar colours to the Brugge team. They are competing in the Pro League this season after winning promotion last time out.

Things got off to a good start for La Louviere with a trip in the box leading to a penalty in  the sixth minute which was, after an unexplainably long VAR check, converted by Pape Moussa Fall. 

La Louviere taking the lead set up the way things were going to be in the first half. Cercle having the lion's share of the chances with La Louviere sitting deep and trying to hit them when they could on the break. Cercle seemed to be lacking in quality up front and trying to walk the ball in when they got near the box. They were also guilty of putting high crosses in the box against a tall back 3 that didn't amount to much.

The second half saw Cercle coming out with all guns firing, but it left them open at the back. Inevitably, La Louviere found another chance to get in and Joel Into made the most of the gaps to give the visitors a two goal lead on the hour mark. The boos and the rain started to poor down and the travelling fans got the flares out. Cercle were now truly up against it and Fall made it 3-0 10 minutes later.

3-0 looked like a mountain to climb, but it did lead to Cercle's best spell. They managed to get a goal back through Oluwaseun Adewumi on 76 minutes. Unfortunately, a lot of Cercle fans had already called it a day as the rain poured down. They did their best to get something more out of the game, but La Louviere were resolute in defence and I was especially impressed by Maxence Maisonnneuve in defence.





















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