"More and more Anderlecht fans discover Futsal"

OTHER Tonight at 9:15 pm RSCA Futsal welcomes the red lantern Pibo Belizia at the Alfa Sun Indoor Arena, five days later Charleroi travels to Roosdaal for the second leg of the Belgian Cup semi-finals. Martin Baert, father of sports director Lieven Baert, cites three things that gave the club a tremendous boost. 

"First of all, there is the story of the move to Belleheide, secondly the cooperation with Anderlecht was born and finally we qualified for the Final Four of the Champions League."

Alfa Sun Indoor Arena
"Suddenly we have our own hall, while other clubs in Belgium have to rent a sports hall. This is really unique and it also means that we were able to equip the hall specifically for futsal, with a gem of a floor."

The collaboration with Anderlecht has also been a success.
"More and more Anderlecht fans are discovering our sport and the club is responding well on social media. In terms of image, we now enjoy a different image than under the name Halle-Gooik."

Champions League Final Four
"After we qualified for the Final Four, we were discovered around the world. Our coach Luca Cragnaz was invited to a seminar for top coaches in Spain and my son Lieven is in demand all over the world for lectures about our success story."

A Clasico in the Final?
Meanwhile, RSCA Futsal also got to know the other side of the coin. For example, Anderlecht saw its top striker Fits snatched by Inter Movistar of Madrid in the winter mercato. "In Belgium, the amateur clubs criticize us for boxing at a higher level than the professional clubs. Well, in Europe, the gap is even bigger between RSCA Futsal and the other big clubs in Spain, Italy and Portugal, which have five times more budget. We will only be able to reduce this gap with the European top if a futsal culture emerges in Belgium. And yes, it is developing. It's a good thing that more and more field clubs are also participating in futsal competitions. So we could see an Anderlecht-Standard cup final, a Clasico that would surely attract a lot of people to the Tolhuis in Ghent during the Easter weekend. For now, we can only dream of an outcome like the Copa del Rey in Spain, which attracted 8,000 spectators from the quarter-finals to the final three days in a row. The Spanish federation had budgeted one million euros for the entire cup event."