"Whoever leaks information, will be fired"

THURSDAY, 22 JULY 2021, 14:08 - lajoya
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INTERVIEWS Wesley Hoedt, Sergio Gomez, Benito Raman and now Kristoffer Olsson: Anderlecht succeeds wonderfully in keeping their incoming transfers out of the press in advance. That's no coincidence. "Our message to the staff is clear: anyone who leaks information will be fire. Period. No apologies", Head of Sports Peter Verbeke speaks clearly in Sport/Voetbalmagazine.


In a not so distant past, it was common: the slightest breeze that blew was reported in the newspaper the next day. But those times have changed. "Many new people have arrived and many people have left. Perhaps the leaks were in the part that left," said Verbeke.


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That the staff has understood the message is clear from the transfer story of Wesley Hoedt. Verbeke tells how Anderlecht held a barbecue for all employees in June to celebrate the return to the office. "Hoedt was just walking around there and everyone knew who he was. Yet we were able to keep everything quiet for another six days until the transfer was completed."

Despite this, names appear every now and then that are linked to Anderlecht. We rarely hear about it afterwards. How did that happen? "Verbeke and his scouts tend to quickly pick up the phone if they want to know something about a player," says HLN journalist Pieter-Jan Calcoen in the podcast Radio Radzinski on Bruzz. "The other parties sometimes benefit from leaking that Anderlecht are allegedly interested. Which is not really the case."