WHEN professional poker player, sports gambler and Brighton owner Tony Bloom bought a majority shareholding in Royal Union Saint-Gilloise back in 2018 it did not cause, not initially at least, many ripples in Belgium.
“We had already had our fair share of owners coming in to clubs from overseas and trying to be successful in different ways by then,” said Wim Conings, a football journalist with the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper who specialises in finance.
“So I guess at first we were quite sceptical about it all. In the first year they were back up in the top division after winning promotion, they challenged for the title. But even then people thought, ‘It will just be a one off. Let's see how they get on next season’.”
The doubters, though, have sat up and taken notice since and been proved emphatically wrong.
RUSG, as they are known for short, clinched the Pro League title amid scenes of mass rejoicing on Sunday when they defeated Gent 3-1 at home in their final game. It was the first time in no fewer than 90 years that they had been crowned national champions.
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Bloom is only a minority shareholder in the Brussels outfit now. The Englishman reduced his stake when they and Brighton both qualified to play in Europe two years ago to ensure compliance with strict UEFA multi-club ownership rules.
He has, however, very much been the driving force behind their remarkable rise to prominence after decades in the doldrums. His substantial investment and insistence on the use of data analytics to identify potential signing targets has underpinned their success both on the park and off it.
So will Hearts - whose fans voted overwhelmingly, it was revealed on Monday night, in favour of giving him a 29 per cent “non-voting” shareholding in the Tynecastle club in return for a £9.86m cash injection - be transformed into giant killers in the coming seasons with him exerting an influence in the background?
Celtic and Rangers supporters are not exactly quaking in their boots at the prospect of the Gorgie men, who have just finished a lowly seventh in the William Hill Premiership, ending their heroes’ 40 year duopoly of the Scottish title during the 2025/26 campaign.
The Parkhead and Ibrox giants had colossal revenues of £88m and £124m respectively in the last financial year. Their Edinburgh rivals, meanwhile, banked just £20m in comparison. It will take more than a few shrewd deals in the transfer market to bridge that gap. Won’t it?
“Last season RUSG only spent €20m on wages. That should translate to seventh place in the league. Club Brugge, who are the biggest club in the country both sporting-wise and financially, were operating with more than four times as much as that, over €80m in terms of wages.
“Their crowds are also far smaller. This season they have had an average attendance of around 8,000 fans in their Joseph Marien Stadium. Club Brugge and Anderlecht will usually have between 25,000 and 30,000 people at their grounds.
“Their turnover is also far smaller. A couple of years ago, they were bringing in around €30m a year. Last year they got that up to €70m because they had some big outgoing transfers. But Club Brugge still had an income of €170m. Somehow, they outperformed everyone this season and still made the biggest profit in the league at the same time.
“The data from StarLizard/Jamestown Analytics that they use makes it very easy for RUSG to identify good players in leagues that our other top teams aren't looking at for reinforcements.”
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Stijn Joris, who is the Royal Union Saint-Gilloise correspondent for Het Nieuwsblad, explains how their canny dealings in the transfer market have helped them to become the dominant team in Belgium as well as a formidable force in Europe and has enabled them to remain firmly in the black to boot.
“They look for players in the €250,000 to €1.5m price range,” he said. “But when it comes to strikers they are prepared to pay more. They have bought a few forwards for €4m and last year they bought the Israeli winger Anan Khalaily in from Maccabi Haifa for a club record €6m.
“He was an exceptional talent. A lot of clubs were interested in him and they were convinced he could be a big thing. There are a lot of bigger clubs who are interested in him now. He will leave for a big profit.
“They have been in the top league for four seasons and they have made €40m profit from transfers in that time. Mohamed Amoura, the Algerian striker who is on loan at Wolfsburg in Germany with an obligation to buy, will be sold for €15m this summer.
“Getting into the Champions League could convince some of their players to stay, but this will be the best summer for them transfer wise. But the way they operate is simple. Players are sold after one good season and replaced.
“They are really looking for undervalued players. They are looking for a player who is not playing every game, but has some nice statistics in the games he played. Or they are looking for players who play in Estonia or in Lithuania. They find somebody with special statistics and say, ‘We need to bring him in’.
“They signed the Canadian player Promise David, their top scorer this season, from Nomme Kalju in Estonia last year for €400,000. He won’t be sold for any less than €10m, maybe even €15m. They just keep on doing it.”
“After Bloom and his co-investor Alex Muzio took over in 2018, things didn’t work out so well despite the data they had available,” he said. “So Muzio said, ‘We don’t just have to find players with the right qualities, we have to find the right human beings’. That was something he felt they had overlooked in the first couple of years.
“After their first season they were still in the Second Division, were operating at a loss, and weren’t outperforming their budgets. But they hired somebody to take a look at the profiles of players as human beings. What kind of people are they? How do they interact in a group? That was something that previously was lacking. That made a real difference.
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“This is the fourth year in a row that they have done well. I was talking to Muzio at the Pro League awards last night and he recalled how everyone had said they would only challenge for a year when they started out. People underestimate them, underestimate how strong they actually are.
“In the year that they got promoted to the Pro League, they changed to a 3-5-2 formation. They have stuck with that ever since. Their tactics are very straightforward. They don't very often have more than 50 per cent possession, but they play with a very intense, aggressive press. When they have the ball, they go straight to the goal.
“That is what they have been doing for the past five years and they have changed coaches every year. They buy players to play in a 3-5-2 and find coaches who like to play that way. It has worked for them. Muzio told me that, according to the data he has right now, RUSG would be in the top 24 of the Champions League with their current squad.”
Both Conings and Joris stopped short of predicting that Hearts can become the first club from outside Glasgow to win the Scottish title since Aberdeen did so 1985 and the first Tynecastle side to be crowned champions since 1960 due to their association with Bloom. But they both envisage exciting times ahead.
“Jamestown Analytics have by now an impressive track record now,” said the former. “Look at the clubs they have been working for on a consultancy basis. Como in Italy, for instance, also recently enjoyed a promotion after outperforming their budget. This is definitely good news for Hearts.”
The latter said, “The level of the Scottish top flight is similar to the league in Belgium, possibly a little lower. The players they scout for Union can also be brought in to Hearts. It will be beneficial for Hearts in the long run, no doubt about it. They should be excited about what lies ahead.”
