KVC Westerlo has started the new season excellently with nine out of twelve. Hasan Cetinkaya hopes that the question marks around the Turkish owner can finally disappear. “It is our intention to stay here effectively.”
Ercan Oktay is the owner of KVC Westerlo, but it is Hasan Cetinkaya who takes on the daily management of the club. The former sporting director of Fenerbahçe SK certainly finds enough challenge in The Silent Kempen.
“At Fenerbahçe I had seen everything and won,” Cetinkaya said in The Latest News. “The goal of such a club is to stay at the top. Oktay showed me that Westerlo was a completely different challenge.”
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In recent years, the Turks have been building a team and infrastructure step by step. “We had the opportunity to build a club from nothing and shape it according to our own ideas. That especially appealed to me enormously.”
The Turks also had to deal with the necessary distrust in Belgium. “KV Oostende, AFC Tubize, Royal Excel Mouscron, Lierse SK,… I know the examples and understand that the outside world looks at us critically. But sometimes I also think: what else do we have to do to make our intentions clear?”
Sometimes I also think: what else do we need to do to make our intentions clear?
“Oktay comes to watch almost every home game,” said the vice-president of The Ruffs. “He spent more than twenty days this summer with his family in his house in Tongerlo. I myself was raised French-speaking and I am following an integration course. I really want to be part of society.”
The Western infrastructure will not suffer either. The Turks have already paid ten million euros to renovate the training complex and the renovation plans for Het Kuipje have also been finalised.
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“We could have used that money to attract new players, right? But we prefer the long-term project. Our intention is for Westerlo to become an example club. Our infrastructure already ensures that players who would never have shown interest in Westerlo before want to come and play football here.”
Although it is not the intention that Oktay keeps pumping money into Westerlo. “Once the foundation is there, the intention is that the club can become self-supporting. I am certain that we are on the right track. Our good start to the competition is proof of that.”
What are the ambitions of KVC Westerlo?
“We are talking about top six and European football,” Cetinkaya concludes. “Does that mean we absolutely have to play play-off 1 this season? No, but why would we make all the investments without ambition? We are raising the bar all the time. And we intend to continue to do so.”
