Updated at 13.22
GILLES DE BILDE’S football career was nothing if not eventful.
Now 44 and working as a pundit for TV channel Eleven Sports, De Bilde first truly came to prominence in the 1994-95 season while playing for Eendracht Aalst as a youngster, when 21 goals in 33 games earned him the Belgian Player of the Year accolade.
After earning a big move to Anderlecht, the striker’s fine form continued, with 22 goals in 46 league matches. However, subsequently, it all went pear-shaped, as De Bilde suddenly became embroiled in a controversy that is still notorious to this day.
During a December 1996 game between Anderlecht and former club Aalst, De Bilde saw red (metaphorically speaking, he wasn’t sent off or even booked after the referee missed the incident). As Anderlecht’s Par Zetterberg was running up to take a penalty, De Bilde ran towards the box anticipating the possibility of latching on to a rebound, only to be tugged back by opponent Krist Porte. The frustrated young striker wrestled free from the player’s grip and then hit Porte with a vicious off-the-ball punch.
The incident left Porte with a broken nose and a damaged eye socket (there were fears he could go blind in one eye initially). Unsurprisingly, De Bilde was consequently pilloried by the press, as Porte’s bloodied face was splashed across the front page of Belgian newspaper De Nieuwe Gazet.
Players in football are rarely subject to police investigation for on-field incidents. However, Duncan Ferguson was one example from that era who was an exception, as he became the first British international player to be jailed for assaulting a fellow professional on the field of play in the mid-’90s. While playing for Rangers in an April 1994 Scottish league match with Raith Rovers, the Scottish forward was booked for headbutting an opponent, in an act that later saw the Scottish international convicted for assault and handed a three-month prison stint, which he received by the time he had been sold by the Ibrox club to Everton.
Similarly, De Bilde was heavily condemned for the Porte incident, and like Ferguson, the star — by then a 25-year-old Belgian international — was kept in jail overnight after Porte lodged a formal complaint. The assault victim was out for eight months, and was never really the same player thereafter, as he struggled to recapture his previous form. In 2008, the case was eventually brought to an end with De Bilde paying €10,000 in compensation to Porte — far less than the €200,000 that the victim had initially sought.
It was not the first time De Bilde had been the subject of controversy. In August of that same year, the temperamental footballer had head-butted a male nurse and punched another nurse, after being denied access to a hospital room where his father had been taken after suffering a brain haemorrhage. He had also received a two-year suspended prison sentence in 1992 after head-butting two boy scouts. Unsurprisingly, his Anderlecht coach at the time recommended that he see a psychiatrist.
After the Porte incident, De Bilde had become a national disgrace. Despite a video message in which he asked for forgiveness, the controversial striker left Anderlecht just a month after this on-field assault, joining Dutch club PSV.
Now a reformed figure, a pundit and TV personality who has appeared on a number of shows, including the Belgian version of Dancing on Ice, De Bilde regrets his violent past, and in particular, the Porte incident.
“It was just a moment where I lost my calm after almost 90 minutes of being harassed on the pitch,” he tells The42.
I had a bad reaction, and it happened, so afterwards, I learned that I had to be a bit more calm and a bit more accepting of getting (harassed) all the time, but it happened and it’s too late to change it anyway.”
Despite the controversy looming over him, De Bilde went on to make a successful transition from Dutch to Belgian football. He scored 24 goals in 49 league games for PSV, with his goals inspiring the club to the Eredivisie title in 1997.
Yet despite his initial success, De Bilde was gradually overshadowed by another recent purchase up front. Bought from Heerenveen in 1998, a young striker by the name of Ruud van Nistelrooy would earn Dutch Player of the Year in his first season at the club after an incredible haul of 31 goals in 34 games. He would, of course, go on to enjoy similarly prolific stints at Man United and Real Madrid thereafter and become a Dutch footballing legend in the process.
In the summer of 1999, De Bilde’s impressive track record led to him being bought by Sheffield Wednesday, then a Premier League side, for a £3 million fee (a considerable amount of money in footballing terms at the time).
De Bilde’s first season in English football was as turbulent as the rest of his career up to that point. He scored 10 goals in 38 games, a respectable tally, however he was controversially dropped for Wednesday’s penultimate game of the season against Arsenal at Highbury, which they needed to win in order to avoid relegation.
Nevertheless, with Wednesday 1-0 down after 56 minutes against the Gunners — who were set to finish second behind Man United for the second season running — De Bilde was introduced into the action along with fellow forward Gerald Sibon, with the visitors in desperate need of some inspiration.
Sibon proceeded to score with his first touch, before De Bilde dramatically put Wednesday ahead two minutes later, linking up with Andy Booth, who nutmegged Arsenal centre-back Martin Keown, with the Belgian subsequently finishing coolly past a helpless David Seaman.
Not best pleased at being initially consigned to the bench by acting manager Peter Shreeves, the BBC report at the time notes how “De Bilde made his feelings about being dropped clear, gesturing wildly to the bench and punching the air furiously as his team-mates tried to congratulate him” — a typically fiery response from this most combustible of personalities.
Incredibly, Wednesday went further ahead shortly thereafter, as Irish midfielder Alan Quinn collected De Bilde’s defence-splitting pass and beat Seaman to make the score 3-1, as a shock seemed very much on the cards all of a sudden.
Nevertheless, the Owls were brought back down to earth when two brilliant quick-fire strikes by Silvinho and Thierry Henry rescued a point for the Gunners and ensured their rivals’ fate was sealed, dropping down to England’s second tier, and failing to return since, most recently losing a Championship play-off final against Hull last month.
Despite getting into double figures for the club, De Bilde was again the recipient of heavy criticism amid the fallout from the Owls’ disastrous campaign. Ultimately perceived as a mercenary by Wednesday’s fans who suspected the talented striker was primarily motivated by money, incoming boss Paul Jewell also didn’t help matters by accusing the forward of a lack of effort.
With Wednesday struggling for cash following their relegation, De Bilde — as one of their highest earners — was shipped off, initially for a short and unsuccessful loan spell at Aston Villa in which he failed to score in four appearances and was promptly sent back to his parent club. He didn’t get on much better with Wednesday in Division One (as it was then known), managing just four goals in 21 appearances.
The following summer, he left English football for good, returning to Anderlecht on a free transfer. In two years during his second spell at the club, he struggled to replicate his prolific form of old, but still managed 14 goals during this time. He finished off his career at Lierse and Willebroek-Meerhof, before hanging up his boots in 2007, but not before one last minor controversy.
In 2006, he was fined by his club for missing a match, after he decided to forego the game in order to attend his dog’s funeral.
Reflecting on his bittersweet period in England, De Bilde says moving to Sheffield Wednesday was somewhat of a culture shock.
England was very hard because it was a completely different way of football.
“In Holland, I was playing forward and was always pressurising the defensive team.
In England, it was completely different. I played in a decent team but not that good obviously, because we got relegated in the first year, but it was a big change for me.
“English football was very hard. After, when I went to Aston Villa, it was much better, because Aston Villa were a much better team. At Sheffield, it was really difficult.”
Particularly in the early days of the Premier League, many foreign imports had difficulty adapting and struggled with homesickness — perhaps epitomised most by Chile international Javier Margas’ infamous struggles at West Ham.
De Bilde, however, denies that he ever struggled with homesickness, and points out that British players often also find it difficult in unfamiliar environments.
I always think when I see players from England or from the continent, these kind of players always seem to have trouble adapting to the way of life in Europe. It’s a pity, because it’s a really good thing (playing on the continent). Gareth Bale, for instance, had some trouble adapting at Real Madrid in the beginning, but now, he’s getting better and better.
“I understand that it’s difficult, because you’re leaving your family, you’re leaving your habits, you’re leaving your way of life, you’re leaving everything, but that’s football — you only have a career of 10 or 15 years and you have to do it in that time, so you should get the maximum out of your career and if that means going abroad and changing your way of life, you have to do it. Afterwards, you’ll have regrets if you don’t do it.”
Nonetheless, De Bilde believes it’s much easier these days for foreign players to integrate. Clubs are, by all accounts, better equipped to make footballers from abroad feel at home, while England’s top flight is more continental than ever in both style and make up.
They’re getting more and more foreign players in their teams,” De Bilde adds. “Their way of playing football is changing a lot. Some teams do keep their spirit and their way of playing and a bit more of an English style of football, but a lot of other teams are changing because of the players that they’re bringing in.
“They’re players who used to play in competitions in Spain or France or Italy, and it’s a different (style of) football over there, so from that perspective, it is changing.”
Of course, the same could be said of De Bilde, who has gone from national disgrace to respected football pundit in Belgium, from Sheffield Wednesday misfit to Dancing On Ice star. So as with Paolo Di Canio, Benito Carbone, Denis Bergkamp and the many other maverick strikers of the Premier League era back then, football will surely never see his like again.
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