The strange story of Union Saint-Gilloise's technical sponsor

Last year, Royale Union Saint-Gilloise quickly climbed the ranks of the Old Continent's hottest teams, rising from the Belgian second division to almost win the title after more than eighty years since their last championship. This season, however, the Brussels team has gone one better, reaching the quarter-finals of the Europa League and second place in the Jupiler League, just a few points behind leaders Genk. But of course, the special features of this historic team are not limited to simple results on the pitch. For this season, after years of subcontracting their jerseys to major sponsors such as Erreà, Joma and Le Coq Sportif, the Belgians have decided to go the in-house route and launch their own sports line.

An almost anachronistic solution, but one that reflects well the tradition-conscious and collaborative approach of the team from the Belgian capital, which, although it has only recently returned to a high level, can look back on more than a hundred years of history. When it came time to design the club's sporting line-up, the choice of name fell on a moniker that is as iconic as it is obscure. Indeed, on the Union's yellow and blue jerseys is the logo of a fictional Union Soixante, later anglicised as Union Sixty. The reference is history from another century, as the Belgian club is celebrating its 125th anniversary this season, when the team from the small town near Brussels managed to win three consecutive national titles in the three years from 1933 to 1935, going unbeaten for 60 consecutive matches.

It was precisely this last record, set by the team under then-captain Jules Pappaert, that earned them the nickname Union Soixante, meaning sixty consecutive games without defeat. ninety years later, current chairman Tony Bloom, who also owns Brighton and is a betting expert, has decided to revive Union's history by taking the team out of the lower leagues and celebrating their triumphant past. 'President, we will not lose another game' were the words captain Jules Pappaert addressed to president Joseph Mariën. The rest is part of the history of Belgian and international football. As a tribute to our history, we are launching our own clothing brand, Union Sixty,' Bloom himself said at the beginning of the season when presenting the team's new jerseys.

So, while the football world is increasingly converging on the same brands and a uniform aesthetic, Union Royale Saint-Gilloise has decided to stand out from the crowd and even look back to an era when teams still made their own jerseys before there were multi-million dollar sponsors. Another ironic element is the main sponsor on the jersey, namely Lotto, which helped shape the aesthetic of the 90s and is now only seen on Monza jerseys in Serie A, which is a reversal between technical and commercial sponsors. If you are a lover of nostalgia-tinged football, deep history that transcends recent decades, and if you are a fan of European teams from lesser-known leagues, Union could be your new game to cheer on as early as Thursday's Europa League second leg.