and the Belgian Cats set the Pierre-Mauroy stadium on fire

A stadium that sings is beautiful. A crowd which vocalizes its encouragement behind a national anthem or which camouflages its false hopes under hastily written verses. There are the great classics. The unsurpassable You’ll Never Walk Alone in Liverpool, the thrills of Land of My Fatheron the Cardiff side, or the anti-Juventini lazzi of Maybe it’s because I love youin Milan. There are surprises. There Africa Saga of Noah’s band at the Palais des sports in Lyon, in 1992. Or the Republican Guard at the Stade de France and its incredible “feathers and electric guitar” version of Don’t Look Back in Angerfrom the English group Oasis, one evening in 2017.

And there was, in this Olympic summer, like a clap of thunder in Lille, when nearly 25,000 people sang their trilingual anthem, Brabançonne. Each in their own language: “O Belgium”, « Oh dear Belgium », “O Belgium”… It’s not easy to sound in tune and in three languages. But that evening, Thursday 1^is August, not a hiccup, not a dissonance in the aisles of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium. Just a moment of intense communion between the public and the Belgian basketball players, the first surprises by this unsuspected surge of fervor.

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