The Belgian club, involved in the Conference League playoffs, became the first B Corp in the world of football in January.
As we already told you some time ago, the Royal Union Saint-Gilloise it has never been a team like the others. Founded on November 1, 1887 in Saint-Gilles – a municipality in the Brussels metropolitan area of very popular origin, which has now become one of the most fashionable thanks to the strong presence of expat who work in the offices of the European Union – is the third most successful team in Belgium. Between 1933 and 1935 he achieved sixty consecutive victories, but since then he has never won a title.
Its most successful president was son of a butcher. It was he, in 1926, who gave the name to the stadium where it is still played today: Joseph Marien. Inaugurated seven years earlier with a friendly match against Milan before the eyes of the Prince of Belgium, it stands within a natural park, is surrounded on two sides by a forest and is protected by the Fine Arts as an example of Belgian Art Deco . In 1938, his rivalry with the Daring – team from the nearby municipality of Molenbeek – inspired a play, Bossemans and Coppenolle, which was quite successful, as evidenced by the presence of a statue of the protagonist in one of the streets of central Brussels.
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Today is a club multiculturalewith 19 different nationalities in the squad, which reflects the multi-ethnicity of an area that developed thanks to immigrants of various waves – Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Brazilian, Polish, North African – until it became the reference point of expat. It is a modern club, whose model of sporting success has been defined as post-contemporary and is based on big data – the famous method Moneyball – combined with careful human analysis of footballers. Its current president, Alex Muzioat 18 he was a child prodigy of mathematics and grew up to be protégé Of Tony Bloom, the former poker player chairman of Brighton and minority shareholder of RUSG. His supporters never chant against rival teams. Indeed, one of the most popular songs at Marien is We go to the beach of the Righeira. Johnson Righeira is in fact one of the most famous fans of the club since, in 2012, he learned of its existence at the birthday of the literary café “La Piola”, a meeting place for expat Italians.
In 2021-’22, as newly promoted, won the regular season arriving, in the play-offs, -4 behind Club Bruges. A year later, once again first in the regular season, until the ninetieth of the last day they were Belgian champions. Just in the last season, which ended in third place, he founded his own brand – Union Sixty – to celebrate the 125 years of history of the club and the achievement of the boys of ’35, making it their technical sponsor for a year.
The first B Corp in the world of football
Last January 19th the Royale Union Saint-Gilloise announced that it had obtained a certification which makes it not just a different football team from all the others, but also a company like only 8000 others in the world (among the best known: Illy, Danone, Burton and Save the Duck) and different from all the others. In December 2023, the club completed a two-year evaluation process and became the first sports organization in the world to obtain certification and lo B Corp status. But what does it mean to be a B Corp?
B Corp – the B stands for benefit for allbenefit for all – are defined “companies that are committed to measuring and considering their environmental and social performances with the same attention traditionally reserved for economic results (we could add sportsmen, ed.) and that believe in business as a positive force that is committed to producing value for the biosphere and the society”.
The status is obtained after undergoing a long evaluation process by the certifying body B Labduring which the company presents documentation certifying its commitment to the environment and society in five macro areas: governance, community, people, environment and customers. B Corps are often confused with Benefit Corporations (in English Benefit Corporation). The latter is a legal status – alternative to the various SRLs and SPAs – which makes official from a legal point of view that the company’s business model vada beyond mere profit. It is a sort of next step, so much so that in Italy B Corps are required to become later Also Benefit companies.
The club plus green of European Union
The minimum score to obtain certification is 80: Royale Union Saint-Giloise scored 88 points. The area in which he registered the better performance it is the one linked to its employees. This is due not only to the financial stability of the club, but is also related to transparency of hiring processes. In recent days the Union was looking for an accountant: on the club’s official website, as the first piece of news, more important and bigger than the others, it appeared The announcement “RUSG is hiring!”. How many Italian companies do this? The answer is what you all think. As for the scopes social and environmentalthe commitment of the Union Saint-Gilloise is all in Union Inspires, the strategy launched in 2022 – based on social impact, ecological impact, good governance, sustainable and lasting partnerships – but Union SG’s mission has been clear for some time. The two current owners, Muzio and Bloom, had announced it when, after purchasing the club, they declared they wanted to make it the team more green of European Union.
Since 2019, beer has been drunk in reusable glasses at the Marien Stadion; since 2020 the stadium has been dotted with recycling containers, thanks to a partnership with Coca Cola. Also in 2019/20, the club began to calculate your footprint of carbon – the CO2 emissions produced by its activities – and signed the document in 2021 Sport For Climate Action of the United Nations, pledging to become carbon neutral by 2040. The Marien Stadion is powered by renewable energy and the supplier – Eneco – is recommended by Greenpeace, while 125 thousand mangroves have been planted in Madagascar to offset its emissions. The stadium bathrooms have 100% recycled toilet paper and the cleaning products used are supplied by aLocal family run business which boasts Ecolabel certification thanks to a production process that minimizes waste production, water pollution and energy consumption.
The initiatives benefiting the population of Saint-Gilles are all the responsibility of the Union Foundation, born in 2018, and always put football at the center. For example, a team of walking football to allow those over 55 to do physical activity without risking serious injuries. There are teams dedicated to people with psychiatric disorders (Epsylon team), persone homeless or with mental or physical health problems, suffering from addictions (RUSG Younited team) and to people with visual impairments, the Goal-ball team. Every year in Saint-Gilles the Union Cupa tournament between the municipality’s elementary schools.
Younited players (foto: Union Foundation)
The worst score (only 0.2) was obtained in the area concerning one’s own consumersor i fans, despite the fact that they are often involved in decision-making processes. Union Saint-Gilloise is one of the few European teams (like Como) that has decided to don’t release a new official uniform every season, in order to combat the planned obsolescence of football shirts. The selling price is also 15 euros less than in Anderlecht and Royal Antwerp and 20 euros less than in Club Brugge. The poor results in this section, therefore, are more due to type of product sold: Companies that perform well are those whose business model solves a certain problem for their consumers, such as drug manufacturers or the entire education sector. Without this biastherefore, the overall result would have been even greater than 88.
However, Royale Union Saint-Gilloise is not the only club that is moving in the direction of creating “shared value”. Football League Two club Grimsby Town have also taken the same path. In January, St. Pauli published its first “common good balance sheet”, a self-assessment document on its ability to create value for its community, its employees, shareholders, stakeholders and the environment. The next step could be B Corp certification. In the meantime the Union Saint-Gilloise has forged ahead by doing, in its own way, the history of this sport. If we think about where the club was before the arrival of the new owners it seems impossible, yet this precocity should not surprise us. Draw up one sustainability ranking of football teams is quite complex because many parameters are not objective, but if we rely on the certifications we can affirm that the mission of these two visionaries of modern football is accomplished. The fact that they succeeded in the capital, in factof European Unionwith the favorite club of expat who work in the offices of the European Union, makes everything even richer in meaning.
2024-02-22 08:00:00
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