The awakening of sleeping giant Lierse K. by innovative youth development: ‘It is all about growth'

After Belgian football club Lierse SK went bankrupt in 2018, the club was rebought and reestablished as Lierse K. by the Belgian entrepreneur Luc Van Thillo. But with a very small budget of just €1,6 million, the club needs to be innovative and different. With the unique vision of the head of youth development Dirk Gyselinckx, Lierse K. wants to be the prodigy of how to develop talent. ‘The quality to be able to listen and to keep concentration for x amount of hours is the biggest indicator to identify talent.’

Lierse K.'s head of youth development was one of the architects of Anderlecht's famed youth academy. Photo: © Rik Tuinstra

The Belgian football club Lierse K. was born in 2018, after the first-division club Lierse SK went bankrupt after financial problems and no success in finding a new investor. Luc Van Thillo, the chairman of Lierse K. who earned his money in the industrial automation business, bought the amateur football club KFC Oosterzonen Oosterwijk. After acquiring Lierse SK’s name, logo and stadium, the amateur club was renamed Lierse Kempenzonen (in short Lierse K.).

Lierse K. had to restart and rebuild in amateur football. After two seasons, the club was promoted to the second division in Belgian and thus back to professional football in 2020. They have been playing in the second tier since. But with a unique vision and a strong belief in their own youth, the club hopes to reach the top flight again soon.

Rebuilding from within the youth was a huge challenge though, explains the head of youth development Dirk Gyselinckx. ‘We had no youth players when I arrived in 2020. Our first team was playing amateur level and we had a second team and that was it. But there was a huge interest in restarting the youth academy.’

‘The pitches of the youth facility we bought in Kessel were run-down. We were playing in nettles – Dirk Gyselinckx (head of youth development)

The former Lierse SK was famed for developing youth players. Jurgen Cavens, Carl Hoefkens and perhaps the most famous of them all Romelu Lukaku are all youth products from Lierse SK. But the remains of the famed youth academy were far to be found. ‘The pitches of the youth facility we bought in Kessel were run-down. We were playing in nettles,’ reveals Gyselinckx.

‘The first six months after my arrival, I was only scouting players and bringing in coaches so that we could start the next season with a full youth academy,’ says the head of youth development. ‘The advantage is that there are more than 400 professional players playing in Europe that I have brought through in my career.’

The Herman Vanderpoortenstadion in Lierse has a capacity of 14,538. Photo: © Rik Tuinstra

Architect of Anderlecht’s youth academy

Gyselinckx started his career in professional football as the head of youth development at Lierse SK and later worked in the same role for RSC Anderlecht, FC Metz and AC Milan. Together with Jean Kindermans, Gyselinckx is one of the architects of RSC Anderlecht’s successful youth academy that has been responsible for bringing through talents such as Romelu Lukaku, Youri Tielemans and Leander Dendoncker.

‘At Lierse K. our budget is €1,6 million for everything. To put this into perspective, Lommel SK bought a player last summer for €4 million alone’ – Dirk Gyselinkcx

But Gyselinckx decided to go back to where it all started. ‘Luc Van Thillo convinced me of the project of Lierse K. A club built on Belgian youth and young talents. And this with a very small budget. Here our total budget is €1,6 million for everything. To put this into perspective, Lommel SK (another Belgian second-tier side) bought a player last summer for €4 million alone. We cannot afford these kinds of players, so we have to focus on our youth.’

High potentials

With a small budget, Lierse K. must be innovative to compete with other clubs’ youth academies in Belgium. And the challenge is large. They are still only playing in the second tier and the club’s budget does not allow it to give semipro contracts to its youth players. At Lierse K., the youth players even have to pay money in order to be registered at the club whereas clubs such as Club Brugge, Royal Antwerp and Anderlecht are able to pay their youth players.

‘At the moment the only way to keep our best youth players is to convince them of our project. Eventually, I hope we can give some youth players a semipro contract which would be €10,600 a year. Which is also not a lot, but right now we cannot afford this,’ says Gyselinckx. ‘As a club, we also cannot get the high performers. It is impossible. That is why we need to focus on the high potentials.’

‘There is something wrong with football in Belgium because there are a lot of great players who were never recognized by us as talents’ – Dirk Gyselinckx

‘There is something wrong with football in Belgium because there are a lot of great players who were never recognized by us as talents,’ says Gyselinckx. ‘Dries Mertens and Sven Kums for example. Mertens was only recognized as a talent in The Netherlands where he started his career, so there is something people are not seeing and there is so much talent going to waste.’

What the education system can learn from Lierse K.

Gyselinckx has tried to transform every club he has been in with his own vision of youth development by focusing on learning. ‘When you are working with children it is all about growing and not about performing. For a lot of people in football, it is the opposite. All they care about is a good performance. I care about whether the kids learned something. And I prove this by looking at their level at the end of the training versus their level at the beginning of the next training. If they learned something, their level is always identical.’

‘I have done years of research to understand how a kid learns to try to understand how their brain works and to figure out the best ways to teach them the game,’ says Gyselinckx. ‘One of the findings was that children learn better within a group. And that is one of the key aspects of our vision within the club.’

Dirk Gyselinckx started his career as the head of youth development at the Belgian side Lierse SK. Photo: © Rik Tuinstra

According to Gyselinckx, it is a stark contrast to the society we are living in where solidarity between people is a rare find. ‘We have all become rivals of each other. We are living in a society where you always need to be better than someone else and where you need to be the best at something. This is one of the biggest reasons in my opinion why there are so many people who suffer from depression. Exercising together and being a team is a difficult thing. That is why it is so important to have the parents of the children on our side at Lierse K.’

‘Parents are an important factor in building a positive group feeling and in building balance within the changing room,’ reveals Gyselinckx. ‘If one parent is dissatisfied with their kid’s playing time and creates a rivalry with another child playing in their kid’s position, it will only be a matter of time before there will be friction within the squad. But getting the parents on your side is so difficult, that is why we try to explain to them how we are working.’

Lierse's stadium is old but has a lot of character to it. Photo: © Rik Tuinstra

Gyselinckx also states that 75% of all youth teams in academies in Belgium are made up of children who are born in the first half of the year (between January and June) and only 25% who are born between July and December because of the physical advantage the children tend to have who are born in the first half of the year. But physicality is not the deciding factor in the youth academy of Lierse K.

Hence why Gyselinckx places such importance on learning and on the brain. ‘Attention, concentration, grit, curiosity, mental endurance and self-confidence are things we pay attention to when searching for children with the ability to learn. The quality to be able to listen and to keep concentration for x amount of hours is the biggest indicator to identify talent.’

Ability to concentrate is key

But this is easier said than done in a society where our attention span is shorter than the blink of an eye. However, Gyselinckx believes that these are qualities that can be taught. Within Lierse K., they teach these qualities within their training drills based on synchronization. ‘We have developed training drills where you can only succeed because of working together with someone else. A simple example is to place a cone in the middle and have four players arrive at the exact same time. The players need to adjust their speed to others so their concentration is already increasing.’

Drills based on synchronization not only increase the concentration of children but also increase social interaction. Another key element in team building and creating togetherness in a squad reveals the head of youth development.

Gyselinckx first created drills based on synchronization at the multicultural club Anderlecht. ‘When I arrived there were a lot of good footballers in the youth academy, but they were all playing for themselves. They divided themselves into groups of Dutch-speaking players and French-speaking players. So we integrated the synchronization drills to bring them together and the results were outstanding. This is something they are still using at Anderlecht and something we try to do here too.’

In Knack Sport/Voetbalmagazine Lierse K. revealed that within 5 years they want to have ten youth players in the first team. Currently, only the 22-year-old right-back Pieter De Schrijver made the step from the youth team to the first team’s starting line-up.

‘The goal for next season is to have the youth teams and first team train in the stadium. The biggest problem at the moment is that the first team is training in a facility in Oosterwijk and the youth in Kessel, and we need to bring them together,’ says the head of youth development. ‘This will create the feeling for the youth players that the road to the first team is achievable.’

We are on too many islands, but we got to bring it all together' - Gyselinckx

On the 15th of February 2023, Lierse K.’s manager, Tom Van Imschoot, revealed that he would leave his role at the end of the season. In a documentary made by Eleven Sports, Van Imschoot expressed his concerns about whether they can achieve promotion with their current budget.

In Lierse K.’s pursuit of a new manager, the club wants to create stability. They want to have one style of play for the first team and the youth teams so that the transition for the youth is easier. ‘There is not a lot of cohesion yet. We are on too many islands, but we got to bring it all together. If we can establish how we want to play as a club right now and for the future, we will be making big steps forward in achieving our goals,’ says Gyselinckx.

Belgian Athletic Bilbao

Lierse K. is dreaming of becoming the Athletic Bilbao of Belgium. Spanish football club Athletic Bilbao is renowned for only recruiting players from the Basque country. With a squad full of Basque players the club has been fairly successful, having played in the highest Spanish division since the league’s origin in 1928. Something only FC Barcelona and Real Madrid can say too.

In the future, Lierse K. would also like to only play with players from their own region. They will try to achieve this by a strong focus on youth development and only scouting players for their academy who play in their own region.

The football club also wants to grow their network of partner clubs in the region. Currently, they are working together with one football club in the region. The plan is for these partner clubs to also play a similar playing style to Lierse K’s first team and for coaches to receive workshops.

Belgian clubs invest more than ever in youth

Knack Sport/Voetbalmagazine also revealed that Belgian football clubs are investing more than ever before in their youth academies. This is a trend that makes it harder for Lierse K. to stay competitive given their identity is strongly based on youth development. However, Gyselinckx applauds the fact that clubs are investing money into youth development. ‘I have had different Belgian clubs approach me since I have been at Lierse K, so I have noticed the increasing interest. It is a good thing that other clubs want to focus more on developing youth, it keeps us sharp. At Lierse K we are building our own vision and I am convinced of what we are doing.’

Lierse K. is also the definition of a sleeping giant. The former Lierse SK became champions four times, winning their latest title in 1997. In Lierse K.’s cup match against Anderlecht in November 2022, there were 10,000 fans in their stadium cheering loud and proud. The home side eventually lost on penalties, but the full stadium was a sign of what can become.

The sleeping giant may not have the greatest facilities, but it has the right people working behind the scenes. ‘To develop talents you do not need the best and most beautiful facilities. It is all about the people. I have learned that in first-hand experience at AC Milan, where we had money and great facilities but there was no togetherness, no communication and it was all a political game to get a higher position within the club,’ says Gyselinckx.

Text: Rik Tuinstra