During the Christmas football last weekend, all footballers in 1A wore a special shirt with the logo of Younited Belgium, the social partner of the Pro League.
A similar promotion took place in 1B, but the players already wore the special shirt a week earlier. The auction therefore started a bit earlier than for the 1A-shirts and ended yesterday evening at 9 pm.
Lierse K. and Union brought in the largest amount of the 8 teams in 1B with 5,328 euros. This is followed by Club NXT (5,260 euros), RWDM (5,260 euros), Deinze (3,759 euros), Seraing (3,286 euros), Westerlo (2,869 euros) and Lommel (2,224 euros).
In total, the online sale of 1B-shirts yielded 32,709 euros. For the shirt of Yentl Van Genechten, a twenty-year-old right back of Lierse, a supporter had a whopping 1,250 euros.
Van Genechten’s shirt is currently the most expensive item of the entire auction, by far ahead of Simon Mignolet (Club Brugge / 780 euros). The second place in the 1B classification is for Senne Lammens, the goalkeeper of Club NXT (739 euros).
The auction of specials and 1A-shirts will continue until December 30 (9:00 pm). Last year, the 12th Christmas campaign raised a record amount of 140,000 euros. With two more days to go, the Pro League is well on its way to go above that. The cape of 130,000 euros has already been passed.
The fans of Club Brugge (13,400 euros), Antwerp (10,400 euros) and KV Mechelen (9,600 euros) are contributing the most for now.
Younited Belgium will use the money raised to organize a social-sporting football competition for people struggling with homelessness.
There are 28 Younited teams. Each team is a collaboration between a football club and social organizations such as street work, walk-in or meeting houses, neighborhood sports, crisis and reception centers.
