When you score an own goal it’s a very unpleasant feeling. When you do it more than once, in a season, like Franck Sinclair or Jamie Carragher, it could become, very easily, something ridiculous, both for you and your team mates. Thing which can end up with you being even fired! If it happens twice in a single game it surely can become a modern tragedy, one that gives you a low morale for a consistent period of time. Still, all of these can happen in football, especially because of the increased speed of the ball circulation. But what can you see about a case when a defender puts in three own goals in a single encounter?! Well, it might happen to any footballer, from all field positions, but the case about I will talk it’s a real fact and it involves a defensive player.
It looks hard for someone to do this, but what happened in the second day of the 1995 Christmas overtakes any imagination of football lovers. In that day, Germinal Ekeren, renamed in our days as Beerschot, visited Anderlecht, at Bruxelles. The final score, 4-2 for the hosts, looks like the people from the tribunes were happy to be there and indeed, it was a true show. But not for the visitors! And all of these because one man: Stan Van den Buys. A defender about who few heard will never be forgotten! The man born on 8th of June 1957 in Wuustwezel, made a eight year career at Lierse and after short spells at Molenbeek and Mechelen he choose to end his career at Ekeren. In 1994, when he arrived there he was already 37 years of age but signed a two years contract. Without being a very offensive defender, Van den Buys scored a couple of goals for each team at which he played. Excepting… Ekeren.
He appeared in 53 league games for this side, but surely the one I was talking about above stands out from the rest. By far! In that ‘fatidic’ night, Ekeren could have achieved much more if it hadn’t been for Stan. No, not Stan from Eminem’s song, the one in front of the visitors’ goal! One own goal could happen, as I mentioned before, two also might be scored, even though it’s tough. But not tough enough, considering the ‘performance’ of Van den Buys, who netted a hat-trick, but in his own goal! Unbelievable? It seems so, but it isn’t and the Belgian became and remained, until now, the only professional football player to have this black mark in his CV. And thinking that his team could have even won that game without his own goals! After that season he ended his career and started training as an assistant or scout. In this last position he came back at new founded Beerschot, on the root of former Ekeren. This happened in 2010 and lasted till 2012. Again, two years! But he was received with open arms, despite his bad achievement… Now, in 2013, he moved as a scout at Al Shabab, team from the United Arab Emirates league.
Mircea Dominte 