Westerlo does not fall by stats Overtime: ‘A burden on my shoulders’ | extra time

2-4 to 5-4. Westerlo handed its first win in the move yesterday. Lack of experience, Jonas de Roek can explain. “I have a group that sometimes wants too much,” he told Extra Time.

“They are so excited. They want to help each other, but then they forget to watch. It wasn’t our best match, even though we scored four times.”

“Then you have a mixed feeling. We want to show the team that plays football beautifully, but we also have to learn to control the game.”

“That’s the difference between 1a and 1b. Last year the loss of focus was not punished, and now it is. We still have to take steps on that.”

The Doctoral Student Union was almost able to achieve the national title last year. Is this also the secret dream of Turkish Westerlo owners? “No, we have to be realistic,” says de Roque. “Conservation is our first ambition.”

“But we want to do it our way, in our qualities. We try to do it in every game and we are also confident that we can succeed.”

According to De Roeck, the fact that Westerlo mainly win on the ground and swallow defeats on the go is not a pattern yet. “We made individual mistakes in some matches or were too excited. We still have to grow in that.”

With 6 out of 15, Westerlo has already made a good start in keeping the job. If we take a look at the past 10 seasons, the relegations have always been the teams that were already in the last 3 seasons after day 5 of the match.

Good news for Westerlo (10), but news only for Cercle Brugge, Seraing and Eupen. “Especially for the smaller clubs, the result was important after 5 days of matches,” says Gert Verhein.

“That’s a burden on my shoulder,” de Roek laughs. “Whether winning three times this season is a bad time to go up? No, we just have to get results and try to save ourselves.”

“We immediately had that ambition to rise in Westerlo. After my time at Anderlecht, it was important to find a project where there was ambition and where I could work in my own way. Westerlo had those trump cards.”

Why did de Roque leave Anderlecht already? “I couldn’t agree 100 percent with the tasks that were ready for me. I didn’t want to stay to stay, so we parted ways very honestly and correctly.”