Football Season Guide

Cercle Brugge qualified for Europe last season, largely thanks to the lethal form of their star striker Kevin Denkey. He won the Golden Boot with his 27 league goals, 8 more than the nearest player behind. Denkey’s goals and Cercle’s ability to win many points from losing positions saw them finish the regular season in fifth place. The play-off form remained solid (3 wins, 4 draws and 3 defeats) and this lifted Green and Blacks one place to give them a European visa and a top 4 finish. Denkey was doing his thing up front but Cercle also looked very solid defensively last term. They kept the second-most clean sheets in the league – 12. Coach Muslic begins his third season in charge and he’s hoping that Denkey will stay for one more season. Cercle have been able to keep their main core of players so far. Inner midfielder Lopes was released but with Abu Francis fully recovered from a knee surgery there was always to be room for only one of them on the pitch anyway. Captain Thibo Somers assisted for 11 of Denkey’s 27 goals last season and if these two stay together as the main point of attack Cercle should be scoring plenty of goals again. Goalkeeper Warleson and the 5 very solid centre-backs are all there too. This should make Cercle once again one of the top teams defensively. The big question mark will be how well Cercle would balance their potential European matches with domestic ones. This is new territory for Green and Blacks and they don’t have the depth to rotate too much. Still, there is a possibility that Cercle fail to make the league stage in Europe, then all the focus once more will be on doing well in the league.