Even Old Firm giants Rangers and Celtic know from experience that the Scottish football landscape does not tend to sate the appetite of the most ambitious.
Barely a year goes by without Celtic’s squad being stripped bare by those Premier League piranhas.
Rangers got only one year of service out of Calvin Bassey too, for instance, before his £20 million switch to Ajax.
This, unfortunately, is the harsh reality facing clubs in Europe’s somewhat ‘lesser leagues’ these days, in an era where the financial gulf between the haves and the have-lesses has never been more dramatic.
But this does not mean success cannot be consistent. Take KRC Genk, for instance, top of the Belgian league table as things stand and well-placed to secure a fourth top-two finish since 2019. Genk have established themselves as a consistent title challenger and occasional title winner despite losing star players on an annual basis, from Sander Berge to Bilal El Khannouss, Daniel Munoz to Paul Onuachu.
All four of those, by the way, are playing in the Premier League these days. And that is without mentioning Bassey, Fulham forking over £19 million to lure him away from Ajax last summer.
Genk director still disappointed by exit of Rangers boss Philippe Clement
Technical director Dimitri de Conde, meanwhile, accepts that retaining the services of Philippe Clement became pretty much impossible once he became attractive to more deep-pocketed clubs.
Clement was snapped up by top-flight rivals Club Brugge after guiding Genk to domestic glory in 2019.
Five years on, he is making a living in the Rangers dugout these days following a spell in France with Monaco.
“Philippe brought a real culture of victory here,” De Conde recalls, speaking to RTBF about a coach he remembers very fondly. “He was passionate, he never stopped and was very demanding.
“It’s a shame he left. The club would have progressed faster.”
Clement, of course, would go on to add a further two Jupiler League titles to his CV at Club Brugge. Who knows, had he stayed loyal to Genk, maybe this would have become a dominant period in Belgian football for the Blue and Whites.
De Conde points out that the very best managers in Belgium do not tend to stick around in one place for long. Genk also lost the legendary Aime Anthuenis to Anderlecht back in 1999 while Frank Vercauteren could not turn down the funds on offer at Al-Jazira.
“I was looking at a statistic the other day,” De Conde adds. “The longest-serving coach of [the first division] is the one at Kortrijk who arrived in the autumn of 2023.
“The problem is our successes. Every time we were champions, our coach went to a higher level. This was the case for Aime Anthuenis, Frank Vercauteren and Philippe Clement.”
Philippe Clement bemoaned ‘cruel’ League Cup final loss
Over at Ibrox, meanwhile, if Clement was to leave Rangers in the near future, one suspects it is unlikely to be a choice he makes on his own. Despite an impressive run of form in recent weeks, Rangers remain 11 points behind Celtic in the title race with questions lingering over whether he really is the man to close the gap.
The manner in which Rangers hassled, harried and very nearly beat Celtic in Sunday’s thrilling League Cup final, however, felt like a marker of their recent progress.
“Football can be amazing, great and amazing fun. It can [also] be very cruel. This was a really cruel one, I think,” Clement said, albeit while refusing to put the blame on his £3.4 million left-back as Ridvan Yilmaz’s penalty was saved by Kasper Schmeichel in the shoot-out.
“My team deserved more today, creating more chances than their opponent. Coming back in a good way and then losing with penalties at the end, it stays a casino game at that moment.”
