Think Tony Bloom is crazy to say Hearts can win title? His Belgian fairytale suggests you think again
Tynecastle on Monday witnessed the birth of a new chant. 'We've got ... Tony Bloom,' went the ditty to the tune of Glad All Over by The Dave Clark Five. We'll be hearing a lot of this one this season, you suspect.
Sat in the main stand, maroon scarf wrapped around his neck, the former poker player who's invested £9.86million in the Gorgie club for a 29 per cent stake had just completed a round of media interviews which made Scottish football stop in its tracks.
Bloom wasn't the first man to alight in these parts and make bold proclamations about ending the Old Firm's domination of the game. Two decades ago, Vladimir Romanov, to name but one, was promising the same thing.
But the difference between Bloom and so many of the assorted characters to have frequented boardrooms up and down the land is stark.
The 55-year-old is entitled to make Hearts supporters dream of upsetting the odds, because he's already done it elsewhere. He doesn't deal in hyperbole. His achievements in the game are set in concrete.
If the exact workings of his Jamestown Analytics company remain a closely-guarded secret, then the way Hearts will seek to benefit from its involvement is not. Through data-led recruitment and shrewd player trading, the club will aim to close the gap on Celtic and Rangers and then, one day, surpass them.
Those who believe this simply cannot come to pass after a 40-year duopoly perhaps need to broaden their horizons.
While Bloom's time at Brighton — taking the Seagulls from the brink of the fourth tier of English football into Europe — is the feat for which he's most renowned, it's his association with Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise which threatens to shake the Scottish game to its core.
Based in Forest, one of 19 municipalities around Brussels, Saint-Gilloise's historic standing in the game would only have been known by students of Belgian football.
Once one of the most feared teams in the country, they won four successive titles between 1904 and 1907. They also went 60 league games unbeaten between 1932 and 1935.
They had won 11 championships by 1935. In 1960, they beat AS Roma on the way to the semi-finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
Then came a desperate fall from grace. Saint-Gilloise were relegated from the top flight in 1963. A succession of owners didn't have the wit or the will to halt the decline.
By 1980, they were playing in the fourth division of the game. Drawn from working-class communities in south Brussels, their support began to fall away.
While groundhoppers still visited the crumbling Stade Joseph Marien, the art-deco facade with its stained-glass windows proved more appealing than the football on the pitch.
The eyes of Bloom and his business partner, Alex Muzio, saw things differently when they stumbled upon the place in 2018 as they scanned the continent for clubs with untapped potential.
Saint-Gilloise were then in the second tier, a part-time outfit as recently as 2016. Once the pair took over, Jamestown was brought in to source players who'd been undervalued or discarded by other sides. And so the great rebirth began.
Striker Dante Vanzeir was signed from Genk's C team and immediately prospered. English defender Christian Burgess, a one-time Arsenal youth, was drafted in from Portsmouth and gave defensive stability.
German Deniz Undav arrived from little-known Meppen in the third division. Loic Lapoussin came in from fellow minnows Virton. Midfielder Teddy Teuma joined from little-known French side Red Star.
With manager Felice Mazzu in charge of a squad comprising of unknown quantities, no one knew quite what to expect as season 2020-21 got underway.
By its conclusion, though, no one was asking if those at the helm knew what they were doing.
Without spending anything on transfer fees, Union won the league by a street and were back in the big time for the first time since 1970. Across Europe, people were starting to sit up and take notice.
The squad was shaken up again. Ten players arrived that summer — four on free transfers and three on loan.
Bart Nieuwkoop came in from Feyenoord and would become a mainstay. Japanese forward Kaoro Mitoma joined on loan from Brighton. Cameron Puertas was signed from Lausanne.
After 15 matches, Union suffered just three losses. They didn't lose a single match over December and January and were top of the tree by the time the 34-game regular season ended.
While Brugge would win the title after the split for the play-offs, for the first time since the early 60s Saint-Gilloise were back in Europe.
With Mazzu moving to Anderlecht, they would eventually finish third the following year under Karel Geraerts.
There was never any question of standing still. With Alexander Blessin in charge for 2023-24, Union brought in £30.5million in transfer fees — including £18m for star man Victor Boniface's sale to Bayer Leverkusen (he had cost £5m from Bodo/Glimt).
Just over £9m went back out the door, the largest spend the £3.6m fee to bring in Algerian forward Mohamed El Amine Amoura from Swiss side Lugano.
Blessin finished a place higher than his predecessor, delivered the Belgian Cup and was hired by St Pauli to replace Brighton-bound Fabian Hurzeler.
Last July, Belgium Under-18 manager Sebastian Pocognoli became the fourth manager to lead the club in as many seasons, his willingness to work within a set structure and accept the club's modus operandi non-negotiable.
Another summer of buying low and selling high unfolded. Puertas left for Al Qadsiah in Saudi for £14m, yielding a ten-fold return. Giant Canadian striker Promise David arrived from Estonian side Kalju for £350,000.
He was joined by Franjo Ivanovic, just £3.6m from Rijeka.
When the season started, there were no fewer than 16 different nationalities in Pocognoli's squad.
Many other clubs throughout Europe had tried to succeed by casting the net far and wide, but none were as methodical or as strategic as the partnership between Saint-Gilloise and Jamestown.
Bloom takes in last week's Tynecastle clash against Aberdeen after stating his title ambition
As Muzio, who became the president and owner in 2023, recently explained, every possible effort was made to mitigate against risk.
'We've tried to generally keep it relatively simple,' he said. 'We don't just sign loads of young players from around the world, all of whom speak different languages, and then just chuck them together and hope that it will work out.
'In our squad, we try to mix the personalities. We also try to mix the people who are expecting to start with those who don't - and mix leaders with non-leaders.
'Because if you sign 20 players and they all expect to start, that's not going to work. It just leads to having very unhappy people all the time and a manager who feels he has to rotate constantly just to keep the squad together.'
The club's upward trajectory in the years since Bloom and Muzio got involved would have made them one of the great modern-day stories in world football even if they'd just kept knocking on the door.
But, in May, having been third in the regular season, they won nine and drew one of their play-off games to claim their first title since before the Second World War.
An astonishing achievement arrived without the largesse of an oligarch or a sheikh. The traditional powerhouses of Anderlecht and Brugge were outsmarted and eventually defeated by a smaller club who crunched all the data and moved aggressively in the transfer market.
The riches of the league phase of the Champions League now await. This may only be the beginning.
While Hearts' starting position is much stronger than that of Saint-Gilloise back in 2018, it's likely that several transfer windows would be needed before splitting the big two would be a realistic goal.
Could Bloom's ambition of seeing the league flag flying in Gorgie within a decade be realised? Anyone laying odds against it happening will certainly not be short of interest.
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