OTHER Former Anderlecht player Gilbert 'Gille' Van Binst passed away last night in Zaventem at the age of 73. Van Binst was part of Anderlecht's top team at the end of the 1970s, which won the European Cup II twice, among other things.
Van Binst was discovered by Anderlecht at Vilvoorde. At Anderlecht, Van Binst was retrained from a striker to an attacking right back. In 1968, the 17-year-old Van Binst made his debut in Anderlecht's first team. Besides his attacking qualities, Van Binst was also a defender who could intervene hard if necessary.
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Continue reading In the 70s, he became champion twice (72 and 74), won the Belgian Cup four times and the European Cup II twice (76 and 78). In 1976, Van Binst was occasional captain (Erwin Vandendaele was on the bench) and in 1978, Van Binst scored two goals in the 4-0 win against Austria Wien. Anderlecht also won the UEFA Super Cup twice. In total, Van Binst played 262 games for Anderlecht in which he scored 28 times.
In the 1980-1981 season, Anderlecht wanted to become champions again (in which they succeeded) and they said goodbye to Van Binst. At the age of 29, he went to Toulouse. At that time, this was actually a second division team in France where he played together with his former teammates Rensenbrink (who ended up there after a season in the USA) and Ladinszky. Van Binst played there as libero and almost promoted to first division.
Van Binst was taken away after a season in France by Club Brugge, where had a disastrous season in 1981-1982 and almost got relegated. After that, thanks in part to coach Georg Kessler (with whom Van Binst had won both the title and the cup in 1972), it was able to reconnect with the top. After two seasons at Brugge, Van Binst sopped playing soccer and became Kessler's assistant. In charge of the youth teams, he had Marc Degryse join the first team.
After that, he only trained teams at a lower level. At Lauwe, he was able to work with players such as Lorenzo Staelens and Hein Vanhaezebrouck.
Van Binst played only fifteen international matches for Belgium. In the 1970s, after the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Belgium was unable to qualify for the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. Van Binst was first called up by Goethals and was part of the selection at the 1972 European Championship in Belgium. Van Binst also played regularly thereafter under Guy Thys, but after a conflict, he was not called up after 1977. When Van Binst had to play against his teammate and vedette Rensenbrink against the Netherlands, he suggested that he did not feel like “kicking against his wallet.” Despite the statement, Thys still promised Van Binst another starting spot, but when that didn't happen, Van Binst kicked it off at training.
After his career, Van Binst was a welcome guest in the media, in part because of the many anecdotes he wrote down in a book called Circus Soccer in 2009. Van Binst also wrote for Sport 80 (the predecessor of Voetbal Magazine).
In recent years, Van Binst suffered from Parkinson's disease and dementia. He died in an assisted living facility in Zaventem.
