Not far away from the Dutch-Belgian border, you can find a small team in the neighbourhood of Brecht. A club which has been playing in the lower leagues for decades and decades. But in the meantime, it has grown into an adult version of a team in the national leagues. KFC Sint-Lenaarts is there to stay.
For more than 100 years, Sint-Lenaarts can witness football in the Houtstraat. The club mentions it was founded in 1916 as a cycling and football team. One year later, the football division supposedly went its' own way and later on they would join the Belgian FA.
The Belgian FA however states the club was founded in 1928 as Football Club de Eester Sint-Lenaerts. They do admit the village already had a football team with the same name in 1916. We believe it's safe to assume we are talking about the exact same club here.
For 79 years straight, the club would show football art in the regional leagues. During all those years the name changed into FC Sint-Lenaerts, KFC de Eester Sint-Lenaerts, KFC Sint-Lenaerts and right now it's just KFC Sint-Lenaarts. No merges, no financial problems whatsoever. The football club seems to prove it's perfectly possibly to maintain a healthy and stable team whilst working on the way to the top.
The real work only began in 2007 though, when they promoted to the national fourth division for the first time . And they did great there. The results were good and it was only a matter of time before they would earn a promotion to the next division. The only thing is: the Belgian FA made that promotion a little less shiny.
The Belgian competition structure changed in 2016 and - despite good results - KFC Sint-Lenaarts was placed in the third amateur division (the fifth level). One year later they promoted to the fourth division where they had already played for so lang. But that would last for one year only. Up until toda,y KFC are in the fifth league. But with a lot of flair, a lot of ambition and a wonderful stand which speaks to imagination.
If you want to enjoy our articles in Dutch, you can read them here.
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