WORDS Dom Hogan | PHOTOGRAPHY Birgit Dieryck

It’s early August and, about an hour before kick-off, the Chaussée de Bruxelles in the Belgian capital’s Forest district has been totally transformed. A residential street any other day of the week, right now it’s a melee of yellow shirts, febrile excitement and looks of surprise, as if these Royale Union Saint-Gilloise fans still can’t believe they are watching their first fixture here as champions in nearly a century.

Where the road meets the corner of the aptly named Rue du Stade, local fan bar Union’s Taverne busily oils the voices which will drown out all else with a passionate cavalcade of song in the hours to come. Here and everywhere, Union followers spill onto the street in the shadow of their home ground, the Stade Joseph Marien. I’m here for Union SG’s first home game of the new league season against OH Leuven, and although Europe is still some way off in the calendar, their supporters are already in party mode. Weaving through the crowds, the scent of grilling meat and the distant pounding of a drum in the air, my first thought is that this feels like an awful lot of scarves for a humid summer evening.

My second thought is devoted to the sheer range of fans assembled in the street, from all ages and backgrounds, while a third goes out to the residents of this street-turned-carnival, before I realise that they are most likely the very same bodies I’m trying to forge a path through. Union have always been more of a community than a football club.