Badge of the Day #61 (Lommelse SK)

Another of the very recent additions to the European football club collection is this object representing Lommel, or Lommelse SK, whose name as such sadly ceased to be in 2003 (although, via mergers & rebrandings, are now known as Lommel United), but happened to be another of those, like Genk & Westerlo, that held a particular appeal amongst those encountered via Ceefax when indulging in the weekly treat of checking the Belgian aspect of the selected European league football results & tables in the early years of the millenium.

Again, there just seemed, & enduringly seems, to be something ineffably romantic about smallish town/city Belgium, or its football teams, both in themselves & in relation to the bigger familiar names domestically & who enjoyed a significant continental profile in the less financially-imbalanced 1970s & 80s.
The club’s green & white colours, as represented on the badge, that hauntological object of desire, physical manifestation of the ghost of the name, are, of course, another aspect of the appeal, partial as we are to that combination.

Badge of the Day #60 (KVC Westerlo)

Today’s recently-acquired specimen for the collection features another of our particular favourite names in the form of Belgium’s rather lovely Westerlo, which somehow always seems to have had about it a certain poetically melancholy charm, utterly irrespective of the team’s footballing prowess.

Westerlo, currently heading the Belgian second division in their attempt to regain promotion to the top flight, would have come to attention at the very cusp of the old & new millennia, as their domestic profile rose to the highest level of the league structure & subsequently even a brief sojourn in continental competition, & the attachment to the name has endured since.

The badge itself, featuring the club/municipality crest, displays no particular vintage in its objectness, but still, bearing that romantic name, it’s another to be sported on the lapel with an affectionate pride.