In the Kempen in Belgium you'll find a lot of absolute gems, beautiful stadiums of smaller teams and teams once playing in the higher national leagues but now in regional divisions. Herentals is one of those cities. The Sint-Janneke stadium used to belong to KFC Herentals, but is now being used by the rather new team VC Herentals.
KFC Herentals was one of the older teams in Belgium, founded in 1917 and carrying matricule number 97. It was founded as Herentalschen Sportkring and changed into Herentalsche Sport Kring when they joined the Belgian FA in 1920. Quickly they reached third division and stayed in the national leagues for a couple of decades. In 1941 they underwent a first merge with Netha Football Club Herentals (which was founded in 1924, but never reached the national leagues) and changed the name into FC Herentals, continuing the Herentalsche SK legacy.
During WWII the team managed to promote to second division and throughout the 50s and 60s they would go up and down between second and third. Slowly but surely the decay was crawling into the team. During the 70s and 80s they had to fight for their spots in third and fourth division, even playing in the regional leagues a couple of times. During the 90s KFC Herentals went back up to third division and even made it back to second division in 1998. After only one year KFC Herentals decided to merge with the neighbouring KFC Verbroedering Geel, but in fact KFC Herentals disappeared completely.
After one year VC Herentals was created to fill the empty spot KFC Herentals created and they started playing with the same colours and in the same stadium. From the start VC Herentals worked to go to the national leagues, something they succeeded in doing in 2014 when they reached fourth division. Unfortunately after one year only they relegated back to the highest regional leagues, but it is clear VC Herentals wants to continue the great legacy of the former KFC Herentals.
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