Beerschot A.C.

Germinal Beerschot
	File:Germinal beerschot.gif
Full name	Koninklijke Football Club; Germinal Beerschot Antwerpen
Nickname(s)	De Ratten (The Rats)
Founded	1920 (creation); July 30, 1942 (registration); January 21, 1999 (merge)
Ground	Olympisch Stadion, Antwerp
Capacity	12,771 (full); 12,206 (UEFA)
Chairman	Marc Van Beek
Manager	Marc Brys
League	Jupiler League
2004-05	Jupiler League, 9th
Home colours	Away colours

K.F.C. Germinal Beerschot is a Belgian football club. This club was born in 1999 as a result of the fusion between K.F.C. Germinal Ekeren and K. Beerschot V.A.C..

History

In 1920 was founded the team F.C. Germinal Ekeren in the town of Ekeren, a suburb of Antwerp, where the 1920 Olympics were just finished. It is only in 1942 that the club registrated to the Belgian Football Association, on July 30. In 1971, they added the prefix Koninklijk to their name (meaning Royal in Dutch). The team reached the top division in Belgian football in 1989 and finished 13th. It achieved its best ranking in 1996 and 1998 (3rd place) and subsequently qualified for the UEFA Cup. However, in 1999, due to financial problems, the club had to merge with its rival Beerschot (from Antwerp). The new team, K.F.C. Germinal Beerschot Antwerpen kept the matricule of Ekeren to keep their place in first division (Beerschot was then playing in the third division) but they kept the stadium of Beerschot. By keeping the matricule of Ekeren, they lost at the same time the honours of Beerschot. It finally dropped the name Antwerpen in 2003.