Coucke: "Of course I did things wrong"

OTHER At Van Gils & Gasten, chairman Marc Coucke gave his vision on the malaise at Anderlecht. "It is a very bad year", he was clear. "I understand that the supporters have lost their pride, but we are doing our very best to become top again."


"I understand that the fans are disappointed and that they have lost their pride. There are a lot of people with a tattoo of the club on their body. The club is those people's life," says Coucke. "Of course the basis is that we play poorly. But that still happens. If the supporters sing 'We want to see football', then I want to sing along."

"Completely replaced sporty management"

"The expectations when I started were high and we started well. But the transfers, which we did with good intentions, proved unsuccessful. I apparently appointed the wrong people and we made the wrong decisions."

"What we are going to do now to do better next year? We have already replaced the entire sporting management team. There are now Michael Verschueren and Frank Arnesen. They make the transfers together with the scouting machine that we are fully developing. "

"If we did better transfers, then we had a better team"

A few days ago Coucke said in another interview that 'corpses still fall out of the closet every day'. Was there such a mismanagement before his arrival? "The answer is partly yes. But I cannot stick to what is happening now," said the chairman.

"If we had done better transfers last summer and partly also in the winter, we would have had a better team. The team was a bit deeper than we thought, but we could have made more of it. Of course I also did things wrong. I am the main responsible.

"Experienced top players not yet found"

When will Anderlecht be champion again? "Next year we will all start with zero points again, but there is work to be done. If it takes years, it will take years. I can only promise the supporters that we will do our best."

Coucke also promises that Anderlecht will continue to focus on the youth. "What we have now and what is coming, that is good. The youth will not save us. The youth will only get there when we surround them with absolute toppers. But we have not yet found them."