Charleroi

He's been with Iran since 2022, 16 caps and a respectable five goals there.

And he is 26 years old and plays for Tracker in Iran since 2023, but was playing in Belgium for Charleroi for a year before that.

Otherwise, all of his clubs have been in Iran, Estabal for a year, and his youth club and first senior club was Saipa.

Not selected for any squads there, so this is his first tournament.

Christian Burgess with a fantastic header to beat Stanley Age 2-1.

They remain strong at the top of the table alongside Union, Club, Charleroi and all that.

Leuven, they got their first win of the season.

They beat Raul by two goals to nil.

So yeah, it's looking promising.

They got two home games off the back of kind of the international break, which is nice to kind of try and solidify that home form before they play Anderlecht, which would be a good test to kind of see where they are at before then.

Charleroi as well.

And it's Charleroi I'd like to talk about next because, I mean, what a start to the season it's been for them.

Allied forces push north from France, German troops retreat, and the Belgian resistance grows bolder.

That evening, near the industrial city of Charleroi, resistance fighters ambush a car and killed Oswald Englebon, a Belgian collaborator aligned with Nazi Germany, together with his wife and child.

By dawn, reprisals will begin.

Armed militias loyal to the occupiers sweep into the nearby town of Courcelles, torching houses, dragging civilians from their homes, and lining up community leaders in a cellar.

With German support, Rex seized a new chance at power.

In January 1941, de Grelle openly pledged full loyalty to Nazi Germany and the policy of collaboration.

His men became indispensable allies of the occupiers, especially in Wallonia, the French-speaking southern half of Belgium, and Charleroi, where Rex began to install its own mayors and paramilitary militias.

On the 19th of November 1942, Prosper Turgels, the rexist mayor of Greater Charleroi, was gunned down by resistance fighters.

Dinant also becomes, in this period after, a space where the Germans accuse the local population of being franc-tireurs, and you'll see mass executions of Belgian civilians taking place in Dinant too.

So although not one of these big famous battles like Charleroi, like Mons that we hear about in Belgium in 1914, for people like Charles de Gaulle, for these innocent Belgian civilians, Dinant is an intense experience and a battle that, as I said before, epitomizes the overarching fight in this part of the world in 1914.

I'm glad you've said this epitomizes a 1914 battle, because just as you were reading Charles de Gaulle's own account of this, it struck me how many thousands of young French officers, just like he, had such a similar experience.

How many young German officers, young British officers as well, going into action for the first time, dressed, of course, as he was then in the red trousers, the blue jacket of France, leading his men, what he'd been building up to for years of a military career, the idea that had infused him since really was old enough to understand it, we must take revenge upon the Germans.