Saturday, August 14, 2021
The Lions of Flanders, Part 1
We all know of the great club sides of the 1970s. The Total Footballers of Ajax, who won three successive European Cups with their ultra-aggressive, high-tempo football. Their successors as lords of Europe, the Bayern Munich of Beckenbauer, Muller and Maier. The grand Liverpool dynasty which squared the circle by combining continuity with renewal. Last but not least, the mighty Independiente of Argentina, who dominated the Copa Libertadores in the first half of the decade.
Then there were the famous also-rans; Don Revie's pugnacious Leeds United, feared in England and Europe, runners-up to Bayern Munich in a tight European Cup final. The stylish St. Etienne of Rocheteau and Bathenay, for so long a force at the top level. The much-respected Dynamo Kiev, brainchild of football's philosopher-in-chief, Valery Lobanovski, and spearheaded by the brilliant Oleg Blokhin.
Yet there is a team that is barely spoken about these days, which enjoyed a bright three-year heyday in which they reached the final of two major European competitions, and won three consecutive domestic titles. During this time, they won cup ties against, among others, Real Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan, Atletico Madrid, Hamburg, Roma and Lyon. A pretty stellar field.
This was Club Brugge, better known to English-speaking fans as Bruges. It was a team with no stars, and assembled at very little cost. But with a superb team ethic and one of football's great tacticians at the helm, they took on a succession of European aristocrats between 1975 and 1978, and won. All in all, it was a brief golden era for Belgian club football, since Bruges' rivals Anderlecht were winning two Cup-Winners' Cups in the same period.
Much of Bruges' success can be put down to the much-travelled, enigmatic Austrian coach who brought his Midas touch to so many different clubs during his twenty-odd years of peregrination: Ernst Happel.
Formerly an iconic defender with Rapid Vienna and the Austrian national team, with whom he took third place at the 1954 World Cup, Happel began his coaching career in Holland with unfashionable ADO Den Haag in 1962. Totally devoted to the game, and a martinet in training, Happel introduced his trademark "pressing" tactics - later to become synonymous with Dutch football - to the relegation-threatened club, and turned them into title challengers and, in 1968, Dutch Cup-winners.
Moving on to Feyenoord in 1969, Happel made himself a permanent legend in Rotterdam, and in Holland in general, by capturing the European Cup in 1970. Feyenoord's opponents in the final, Celtic, were heavy favourites, and Celtic manager Jock Stein admitted afterwards that he'd been out-coached by Happel. It was the first of four Dutch triumphs in the tournament.
Always keen for new challenges, Happel left Feyenoord after three years. Following a frustrating year with Sevilla, he headed to the Low Countries again in 1975, taking charge of Bruges.
There was already a core of accomplished players at the club, which had won the Belgian league title in 1973. Happel made only a few changes to the personnel, but they were important ones. He brought his experienced compatriot, the sweeper Eduard Krieger, across from Austria Vienna, plucked the energetic young Daniel De Cubber from the obscure Saint-Gilloise club, and later transferred the elegant playmaker Paul Courant across from Liège. All three were to form part of the core unit that brought to life Happel's football philosophy of hard pressing, incessant attack, and tactical discipline.
Like so many sides of the era, Bruges made regular use of the offside trap. But they employed the tactic in a more "holistic" fashion, rather than just charging out of defence en bloc at a given moment: compressing the midfield and defensive lines extraordinarily tightly when playing without the ball, and maintaining excellent discipline in keeping "the line", they frustrated countless opposing players who failed to time their runs well enough. Never was this tactic employed to better effect than in their European Cup semi-final against Juventus in 1978.
To adopt such a tactic requires a very mobile goalkeeper, always ready to dash off his line, and Bruges possessed one in the fine Danish international Birger Jensen. One of many Danish players who were slowly making their mark in European football at the time, Jensen was equally good at commanding his area and pulling off acrobatic saves, and in Bruges' most high-profile match of all - the 1978 European Cup final - he would be at his very best.
Apart from Krieger, the defence at Happel's Bruges was made up of club veterans: the battling fullbacks "Fons" Bastijns and Jos Volders, and the stopper Georges Leekens. The regular midfield three, switching positions constantly and ready to turn defence into attack at a moment's notice, were central to Bruges' success. These three were the aforementioned De Cubber, René Vandereycken, a regular at international level, and the combative, hard-working Julien Cools.
Cools must be one of the most under-rated players of his era. He was a very late developer; at the age of 25, he was still toiling away as a defender in the Belgian second division, and working as a postman to make ends meet. But by the late seventies, he had matured into one of the most valuable midfielders in Europe; technically unexceptional, but possessing boundless energy, deceptive pace, strength in the tackle, and a knack for both scoring and making important goals.
In attack, the towering figure was the Belgian international and Bruges stalwart Raoul Lambert, "the Lion of Flanders". A veteran of the 1970 World Cup, he was treasured by the fans not only for his goalscoring qualities, but for his galvanising effect on his teammates. The Bruges attack was less set-in-stone than the rest of the team, and other characters who played a role during the club's golden period were the creative Courant, the ex-Derby County striker Roger Davies, the young Dirk Hinderyckx, the Danish attacker Ulrik Le Fevre, and later another Dane, the tricky young winger Jan Sorensen.
In Part 2: Happel's Bruges start their string of cup runs in Europe.
