Nakamba’s Club Brugge take huge lead to Championship playoffs

Zimbabwe International midfielder Marvellous Nakamba who ply his trade for Belgian Pro League side Club Brugge finished the League’s regula season on top giving them a massive lead going into the Championship playoff.

Brugge ended their last game of the regular season with a 1 nil win over St Truidense VV.

Brugge finished top, a massive 12 points ahead of second placed Anderlecht, which gives them a six point lead going into the Championship play offs.

Well, the Belgian League uses a different system for the title. The first stage is the general league where each team plays each other once home and once away. This means each team plays 30 games. After this 30 games, the final league table of the regular season decides the actual divide of the play-offs.

The top-6 teams of the regular season go into what is called Play-Off I. This is the playoff that will decide the domestic champion, the runner-up (who also plays qualifiers for the Champions League), and one of the Europa League entries. In the Play-off I each team again plays each other twice: once home and once away. This means each team plays 10 games. The teams start the Play-off I with half of the points they totalled at the end of the regular season. Imagine a team collected 66 points in the regular season, it starts Play-off I with 33 points. The case of Brugge who finished with 67 points means they have points 34 points after rounding to the nearest whole number .

The winner of Play-off I is the champion of Belgium. The number 2 gets to play Champions League qualifiers too. The number 3 qualifies for the Europa League. The number 4 plays the winner of Play-off II for another Europa League ticket.

Club Brugge will start the playoff on 34 points, defending champions Anderlecht on 28 points, Charleroi- 26pts, AA Genk- 25pts, Racing Genk- 22pts and Standard also on 22.

Nakamba had a huge impact in the team success having featured in 26 of the 30 league matches.

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