As Alex Muzio talks about preparing to welcome Newcastle, and potentially greeting the chair of a state oil company that has a revenue of over £11bn a month, he’s marvelling at where Royale Union Saint-Gilloise were just seven years ago.
“When we arrived, the training facilities had no toilet,” the majority owner of the Belgian champions says. “It was literally just a field. The players would get in their car stinking. Now, we’re moving to our second new facilities.”
And, in the process, moving the needle, both for themselves and what might be possible for clubs outside the elite. The change has come from a wider transformation since Muzio and Brighton owner Tony Bloom first decided to invest in 2018. In those seven years, Union have gone from the second tier to winning the title for the first time in nine decades, and on Wednesday host this first ever Champions League home game. The game even has to take place at Anderlecht’s ground, since Union’s own 9,400-seater Joseph Marien Stadium is nowhere near Uefa regulations.
They are not just welcoming Newcastle as a small club delighted to be involved, though. Union have grander ambitions, as illustrated by their Champions League debut two weeks ago. The 3-1 win away to PSV Eindhoven was the performance of the round. Industry figures believe it reflects how Muzio and staff like sports director Chris O’Loughlin and chief executive Philippe Bormans have done one of the best jobs in football.
The journey alone is extreme over-performance.
Muzio is a proactive figure, and a chat veers in many directions, especially over how the game can be run better. He points to what the Champions League even is.
“In September 2005, if you asked who would be in the quarter-finals in April 2007, you’d be like ‘I don’t know who’s going to qualify, or what’s going to happen in the summer’. Now, there are 11 clubs and you know eight of those are going to be in the quarter-finals in 2027. That’s not football. That’s nonsense.”
So, Muzio wants to turn it on its head by applying the coldest sense possible. Union’s rise is no miracle, after all. It’s from the purest logic: the maths.
Muzio himself rose from working at betting company Starlizard, who have Bloom as their biggest client. Viewed as the Brighton owner’s protege, Muzio was soon spearheading a takeover of Union in 2018. He was then a minority owner, but has since become majority owner.
“In the English media, Union is very tied to Tony but Tony has not been involved. It’s hard for anyone to understand, because no one does what Tony’s done. No one chucks loads of money at something and leaves it to someone else to run. He’s got no ego for it, because he’s not a normal guy.”
Union naturally benefit from a deal with Jamestown Analytics, the football data company that licences Starlizard to convert its data to that relevant for betting to figures relevant for football.
“Each club uses it in their own way and, in my opinion, they all get to multiply their budget because of that data. How much more they multiply is down to themselves.”
Muzio is keen to point out that, when Union were bought in 2018, there was no guarantee this would work. Brighton’s recruitment didn’t have the reputation it does now. The project took faith, as well as logic. Muzio even remortgaged his house to buy shares off Bloom, a huge percentage of his wealth.
“After two years, we’d lost way more than we thought and were still in the second division. It would have been easy for Tony to pull back.
“There was a doubt the data was only good for betting. Even Brighton had a few mishaps.
“I remember very clearly sitting down and explaining how much money were going to need for that third season, and expecting him to go ‘f****** hell’. I was not feeling great about the situation. Tony was amazing about it.”
Faith paid off. Muzio elaborates about how good Jamestown Analytics are, but he believes two points are key. One is that it’s private data.
“Most suppliers sell to everyone. Jamestown usually only sells to one club in each territory. So you have it and no one else has it.”
This is the case with Como, Castellon, Grimsby and 15-plus clubs across the world.
“Point two, all of the other data companies are very good at visuals and telling you what has happened before, in a given league. Jamestown is both able to tell you that, and what they think will happen next.
“That’s something they can do that other people can’t do. Fundamentally, it comes back to the fact it’s constantly tested in the real world. This data was originally for betting and if you don’t have good data in the betting world, you just lose money.
“You have to predict the future. And, if you can’t do that, you won’t make money. Ultimately we’re trying to buy players that are good in the future. It’s been sharpened over 20 years, and the people working on it are the best in the world at what they do.
“So it’s very, very hard to have this data and not outperform your budget. But how much each individual club punches above your budget is very much down to you. And, at Union, we believe that we are punching more above our level than the other Jamestown Analytics clubs.”
That can be seen in a succession of signings like Victor Boniface, Noah Sadiki and former Portsmouth defender Christian Burgess, but also the more everyday. Muzio is especially proud of Union’s exemplary injury record over four years. That, he says, “comes from an O’Loughlin masterclass”. There’s the intuitive approach to bonuses, that has proven influential. Common practice in Belgium is that clubs pay bonuses per point, but Union have two measures of their own. First, every player receives the same amount per point. Second, doubling it if you win two games in a row.
“I’ve been amazed at how effective it’s been. Players will go ‘we want to win today because we’re on the double.’ And then the next week, when they’re not ‘we want to win today so that next week we’re on a double.’
“The players requested it, but the CEO didn’t really like it because we wanted to give promotion bonuses. I did some maths and was amazed at how correlated it was. If you don’t get promoted, you basically never paid bonuses. The years when you did get promoted, you paid loads.”
The incentive worked to a deeper level.
Union are now applying it at the highest level, in the Champions League. Muzio believes any edge is required because of how loaded that system is. Hence he’s been more involved in football politics. The Belgian side are members of the Union of European Clubs, which is seen as a broader counterweight to the big boys of the European Club Association.
“One of the biggest issues in football is European competition, especially the Champions League, distorting domestic leagues. Then the Premier League is its own beast, distorting everything else.
And we have to come to a solution for that. At the moment, the solution is to just shrug and let it happen.
One solution Muzio has is a Player Development Reward, a proposal to set aside five percent of Uefa prize money for non-competing clubs who develop talent. Having beaten PSV, the Union owner also discusses current differences between Dutch and Belgian football, that mirrors a lot of debate in England.
“The Dutch league has very clear financial rules, so they don’t lose loads of money, but movement is miles smaller. The big teams stay big, the small teams stay small. Whereas in Belgium, there’s basically no Financial Fair Play at all. There’s loads of movement but also loads of bankruptcies. Teams go out of existence. I don’t think you want either situation. This is the problem.
“Uefa are in a really hard spot but they should be a lot harder on the super clubs.”
Union may even become a rare Champions League fixture who are not members of the ECA. That’s because the body does not allow membership of another club organisation.
“From my point of view, the ECA is an elite group of teams who have all of the executive power, and then there is a group after that, now hundreds of other teams, who have no say, but fundamentally just get to say they’re part of the ECA. They get access to free services because it’s paid for by Uefa. CEOs want to be part of the ECA because they’re treated like royalty.”
Muzio can’t help marvelling at other behaviour at that level, that is recognisable in the English game.
“Clubs start the season with a budget, a plan to get somewhere. If you achieve that, what do you do then? Do you increase your budget? If you fail, you’ve got all these players on contracts. What do you do now? Lower your expectations? No one does that. But then your budget’s going to need to increase because you’ve still got to pay players that didn’t achieve what you wanted. They’ve got contracts. Chaos.”
Hence Muzio’s mission is to “stay grounded”.
“We make a really conscious effort at Union to not change. Our slogan is ‘it’s just Union… but in the Champions League.”
Everything else around them has changed, though. Muzio, who has strong opinions on state-owned clubs, says he’s been thinking about welcoming Newcastle a lot.
“I guess, assuming that [Aramco chair Yasir] Al Rumayyan’s not there, I’ve got mates who are Newcastle fans. I like to take the piss out of them, obviously. But, at the end of the day, they didn’t pick any of this stuff. You’ve got to treat people with respect. The same way as I wouldn’t like it if people looked at me and went ‘Tony Bloom’s just got his hand on your back.’”
Amidst all of that, The Independent puts something we’ve heard to Muzio: that Union actually believe they can win the Champions League.
“Well, what are the chances? 0.3%, and I think that’s inflated. Anyone can win, right, it’s just incredibly unlikely.”
Always looking to the numbers, and the logic. And they all suggest this is going to be a very tough game for Newcastle.
