One will find a lot more football history on the misty hills of Liège than you'd expect. The charming FC Cheratte, part of Visé, reminds of the long gone glorious days of predecessor RUS Cheratte.
Up until 1977 Cheratte was a village on its own, but ever since it's been a part of Visé. When it comes to supporting football, most attention will go to the neighbours of Visé or even to the national successes of the several teams in Liège. But Cheratte had its fair share of national football as well.
It all started in 1934 with the creation of Cheratte Football Club. We can't really call it a success as in 1949 the team was gone without having reached any real results. But before they disappeared, another team was created already; Union Sportive Cheratte-Hauteur. Officially Union Sportive was founded in 1949, but the club itself announced in 1965 they have been created in 1931 already. They even claim to have played games in 1929. The Belgian FA never received any real evidence for this, so they stick to 1940. It seems that one J. Bailly, secretary of the club in 1965, made the claims.
The club is known as Royale Union Sportive Cheratte since 1966. Before that - and also for a long time afterwards - they played their games at a regional level. Until 1993, when RUS Cheratte reached the absolute highlight in their results with a promotion to the fourth division. Unfortunately national football lasted for one year and one year only, because the next season the club relegated to the regional leagues again. A few years before that, a certain Logan Bailly (related to...?) joined the team as a youth player. For four years he was trained by RUS Cheratte before he joined teams like KRC Genk, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Celtic FC.
But, in 2002 it was all over for RUS Cheratte. The team unofficially merged with the neighbours of RCS Visétois and their stadium became the B stadium of RCS Visétois for a while. In 2005 however, things changed a bit. Football Club Cheratte was created and they consider themselves as the continuation of the former RUS Cheratte. The name does give a nice touch to the very first team in the village ever. FC Cheratte started completely at the bottom and right now it's still where they are. Especially when you look at the table/standings today: they have the last spot in the lowest regional league. Almost nothing reminds us that the charming Stade Dieudonné Randaxhe once had thousands of fans and saw national football. How things can change...
If you want to enjoy our articles in Dutch, you can read them here.