Club Career
Staelens started his professional career with K.V. Kortrijk at already 23, and his two solid seasons there attracted the attention of top division giants Club Brugge KV.
There, he proceeded to form a legendary midfield partnership with Franky Van der Elst, that would last nearly a decade. Staelens played 369 games in all competitions for the club, scoring 105 goals.
At already 34, and more often than not playing in the backline, he moved to R.S.C. Anderlecht, still being instrumental in the club's back-to-back championships (2000 and 2001), and winning the Belgian Golden Shoe in 1999; however, he did not finish his last year, moving to Japan's Oita Trinita in early 2001 and retiring shortly after.
Staelens took up coaching subsequently, first with R.E. Mouscron. After only two months at V.C. Eendracht Aalst, he returned to first club Kortrijk as its general manager, only returning to the benches in 2007, as assistant coach at K.S.V. Roeselare.
Staelens kept that role in the subsequent years, with the other team from Bruges, Cercle KSV.
Read more about this topic: Lorenzo Staelens
Famous quotes containing the words club and/or career:
“I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.”
—Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)