Standard Liege’s victory in Belgium’s soccer league, the first by a club from the French-speaking south for 25 years, is being hailed as a “renewal” for the whole Walloon community in a nation riven by intercommunal differences.
When Liege beat their championship rivals Anderlecht, from the Brussels region, on Sunday to secure the trophy, the 2-0 victory swiftly gained significance beyond soccer rivalries, as politicians from the French and Dutch-speaking communities were eager to point out.
“We have not just witnessed a great event for the club. We are seeing something enormous for the whole town and even for the whole region,” said Belgium’s francophone health minister Laurette Onkelinx.
“This is the new Wallonia which we are seeing through this title of Belgian champions. The Walloons are finding themselves again with this victory,” she said.
Tension between Belgium’s two main communities, the richer Dutch speaking Flanders to the north and the poorer francophone Wallonia to the south, has risen over the past year, even leading to fears in some quarters that the country could split along its linguistic faultline.
The intercommunal rows, in a country where only the capital Brussels is officially bilingual, prevented the formation of a coalition government for nine months following a general election last June.
The long-running political impasse heightened tensions long fueled by cultural stereotypes, especially the Flemish view of the Walloons as poor scroungers off the state.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later