In Belgium’s top division, the Jupiler League, there are clubs owned by representatives of Qatar and Malaysia, and another with close links to Pini Zahavi, one of the most powerful agents in the game. All of them are now invested, to varying degrees, in Belgian soccer.

It has all left many here asking one question: Why?

Foreign Exchange

A couple of hours after Roeselare’s match at Tubize, on the other side of Brussels, the clouds burst over the pretty university town of Leuven. The downpour lasts only a few minutes, but it is intense enough to drench almost everybody at Den Dreef, Leuven’s home stadium, and it means that for the first half-hour of Leuven’s game with Lierse, the ball spends much of its time coming to rest in puddles.

It is hard not to feel sorry for John Ledwidge, Leicester City’s groundsman, and his team. They have spent much of the summer making sure the field is in pristine condition, and now one storm has undone much of their hard work.

Ledwidge’s expertise is just one of the benefits provided to Leuven by its new owners, Thailand’s King Power group. Also the owners of Leicester, King Power confirmed in May that it had completed a deal to take control of Leuven, and it has taken a hands-on approach, setting out not just to improve the quality of the playing field but also the squad (a flurry of new players arrived this summer) and the stadium itself (now known as the King Power at Den Dreef). The plan, initially, is to win promotion. “We will have to wait and see,” said Marc van Eylen, a member of the Louvaniste fan group, but even he admits to hopes that King Power can “do the same as they did at Leicester.”

King Power is merely the latest foreign investor to decide a Belgian second division team is the must-have accessory, following in the footsteps of Sportizen (South Korea, Tubize), Wadi Degla (Egypt, Lierse), Xiu Li Hawken (China, Roeselare), Monaco’s owner Dmitri Rybolovlev (Russia, Cercle Brugge) and Jurgen Baatzsch (Germany, Royal Union St.-Gilloise). In the Jupiler League, there is the Aspire Academy (Qatar, KAS Eupen), Vincent Tan (Malaysia, K.V. Kortrijk) and the case of Zahavi, and a couple of Maltese companies, at Royal Excel Mouscron.

It is a remarkable concentration of international investment in a league hardly noted for its glamour. There is no chance to profit from lucrative television rights deals in Belgium; there is no opportunity to accrue the sort of soft power that attracted the likes of Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour to Chelsea and Manchester City of the Premier League. These clubs are a world away from the bright lights of the Champions League.