Series / FC De Kampioenen

Kampioen zijn is plezant!^note From left to right: Balthasar Boma, Pol de Tremmerie, Doortje van Hoeck, Marc Vertongen, Pascale de Backer, Xavier Waterslaeghers, Bieke Crucke and Carmen Waterslaeghers

F.C. De Kampioenen was a hugely popular Flemish TV sitcom about the (mis)adventures of a local amateur soccer (in Dutch the word "voetbal", which actually translate to "football") club and their members. The series aired in 1990 and ended almost two decades later, in 2011. The show remains one of the most popular TV shows in Flanders and was mostly considered to be a family show, appreciated by children just as much as adults. The stories took place on the soccer field, but also in the local bar and the respective homes of the main characters.

The huge popularity of the show turned it into a Cash-Cow Franchise, which spawned musical records, toys and a comic book series, which remains a best seller to this day. Older episodes are still repeated and available by viewer demand on TV, but even now the series itself has ended, the franchise has continued its success as a movie series, with four feature films that came out in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019, as well as a televised Christmas special in 2020.

This series provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • DDT had a crush on Doortje, who was also his secretary and the only person related to the soccer team he consistently got along with.
  • Fernand also had a soft spot for Carmen, and tried to take her away from Xavier on many occasions.
• A Day in the Limelight: The episode Nero superstar is this for Carmen's dog Nero.
• Afraid of Needles: Pascale in one episode.
• The Alcoholic: Xavier, who really enjoys drinking beer. Subverted in that he doesn't really like any alcoholic beverages other than beer.
• Annoying Patient: Carmen is this in two different episodes in which she has to go to the hospital. In the first she hits the head nurse with her handbag, and in the second she manages to terrorize the medical staff of the hospital so much that she ends up in a straitjacket.
• Arch-Enemy: DDT, then BTW and then Fernand. They really hate having the titular "Kampioenen" as neighbours. Each of them has experienced bother from their soccer matches, and has a personal vendetta with at least one of the team members. It's really closer to Sitcom Arch-Nemesis most of the time, but DDT, after escaping/getting released from prison, has genuinely proven to hate the Kampioenen above the other two.
• Armed Farces: There are many jokes featuring a local army bases where Xavier works as a sergeant. It is also used as a subtle satire on the Belgian army, with most lower ranks consisting of middle-aged men who's main motivation behind being in the army is the fact that they don't really have to do anything other than drinking beer, while most higher ranks are filled by corrupt and aggressive sociopaths. And then there's the fact that the base's colonel Vandesijpe is Boma's main companion in visiting the local brothel...
• Ascended Extra:
  • Marcske was originally just a recurring guest character, but he became part of the main cast around season 5.
  • Goedele and her son Ronaldino had a relatively minor role in the last 2 seasons, yet they played major roles in the movies.
• Berserk Button: Never touch Fernand Costerman's (who is a pigeon breeder) pigeons.
  • Whenever DDT's windows were smashed by a soccer ball he went berserk as well.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Bieke was this in the earliest episodes.
• Bit Character: All members of the soccer team that aren't part of the cast are these. They rarely speak any lines and mostly appear in the background, but they do appear in almost every episode and are referred by name.
• Breakout Character: Marc Vertongen was simply meant to be a recurring radio reporter who did reports on the matches. In his early incarnation he was a pretty straight side character, but after a while Flanderisation set in and he was transformed into an infantile imbecile who provided comic relief for the children in the audience. He became a main character of the show and married the character Bieke.
• Breakout Villain: DDT was considered one of the biggest reasons for the shows initial succes.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: The Kampioenen have a legendary losing streak, but whenever the plot demands it they will win a (bunch of) soccer games. During the period Pol played on the team, they actually had mixed results rather than being outright losers. Which is why Pol got a leg injury that kept him from continuing to play after a few seasons.
  • During the final season of the show, however, they spent virtually the entire season winning (by luck).
• Bulungi: The third movie takes place in this setting.
• Butt-Monkey: Doortje is a person who's luck isn't always (mostly not) on her side
  • She divorced after Pico cheated on her. After that she began a relationship with Pol who isn't romantic at all and who would rather spend his time on football than with her. She wanted to have more children and marry Pol. However, she only had one son and after more than 20 years she finally marries Pol.
  • She worked as a secretary for DDT and Boma and as a waitress for BTW's restaurant. All of her bosses didn't treat her like a respectable worker. They would shout at her, withhold her wage, etc. There was even some harrassment involved. She also became unemployed a couple of times.
  • She always wanted to have a cottage house. After 3 flats (a tiny one, one with Fernand as landlord and one with a lot of typical problems), living with Pascal, and a caravan, she finally gets her dream house from a couple that is going trough a divorce. The house wasn't even finished yet.
  • Her friends, especially Carmen, make fun of the fact that she's very prude and submissive. No one ever laughs at her jokes, no matter how hard she tries (everybody liked one of her jokes once, however, she didn't realize she made one.
  • Her son and husband criticize her cooking skills a lot.
  • Pol sometimes gets attention from other women, which makes her very jealous.
• Canon Foreigner: The comics features characters who've never shown up in the TV series.
  • Inspector Porei
  • Balthazar the dog (Yes, the characters are aware that the dog has the same name as one of them.) This dog was metoined in one of the episodes of the show, though.
• Catchphrase: Several characters have one or more:
  • Boma: Mijn gedacht!
  • DDT: Zal 't gaan ja? and 't Is ni waar hè!
  • Fernand: Man, man, man! Miserie, miserie!
  • Maurice: Ik zeg altijd...
  • Pascale: "Wat zal ons Madeleine daarvan zeggen?"
  • Marc: "Oei!"
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • The most blatant examples is probably Pico, who was a main character in the first four seasons, but was written out from season 5 with the Hand Wave that he got away with another woman. Probably as a consequence of the real-life circumstances the actor subsequently got himself, the character's existance was almost entirely ignored for the rest of the series's run.
  • Even though he did technically got Put on a Bus, BTW was never heard from again after he sold his restaurant despite being Xavier's cousin. He was only briefly mentioned once by Fernand and it was completely unknown what has become of him. It was only in the fourth movie, which came out 19 years after his last mentionning, that he reappeared for a short cameo, in which it became clear that he had become a pastry chef.
  • During the first half of the series, Boma had a close friend in Colonel Van De Sijpe, who was also Xavier's superior at the local military base. Despite playing a major role in several episodes, the Colonel dissappeard and replaced with another without as much as a Hand Wave.
  • This also somewhat happened to Billie, Doortje's son. The character went to university in the 18th series (2008), but he became almost forgotten after that. The character wasn't even present up nor was he even mentioned at his mother's marriage in the first film. The character did only reappear in the 2020 Christmas special, in which it was revealed that he had emigrated to New York where he works as a Chippendales dancer.
• Con Man: Fernand Costermans.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: A frequent conclusion of a plot.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: All of the female characters.
• Credits Montage: Every episode of the series ends with the credits rolling over (or, in later seasons, next to) clips of scenes shown earlier in the episode, accompanied by the theme music of the series.
• Cultural Translation: This series is really a local phenomenon and despite some attempts to make a foreign version never really caught on elsewhere.
• Curtain Clothing: Boma's flashy suits aren't actually an example of this trope, but they deserve a mention because they are actually made from curtain fabric.
• Dirty Old Man: Balthazar Boma is obsessed with women who are generally much youger than him.
• Distant Finale: The third and final movie ends with an epilogue set decades after the rest of the movie, which shows how the (at this point very aged) team has stepped down and have become supporters of a new, young team of Kampioenen, trained by Ronald. Bieke and Marc's daughter holds open the bar, DDT and Fernand are living out their autumn years in prison, and Oscar is Happily Married in Africa. Seeing how the show started in 1990 and time passes at the same time as real life, this means the franchise's final scene can easily take place as much as half a century after the opening scene.
• Early-Installment Weirdness and Later-Installment Weirdness: The first few seasons and (to a much lesser extent) the final few seasons have some underlying seriousness and drama, as do the post-series movies, but for the large and by the series is remembered for it's slapstick-based humour.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: Balthazar Boma is a sausage salesman, but apart from him nobody thinks these sausages tastes good. It's so bad not even dogs will eat it, and when a group of hippies that had camped out on the soccer field didn't experience any negative effects from eating the sausage, the team was at it's wits end on how to get rid of them.
• Every Episode Ending: A lot of episodes end with either characters giving a round to everyone in the bar or the neighbour expressing his frustration after the main characters foil their most recent scheme.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: A frequent conclusion of each episode.
• Expy: A recurring character in the comics is an inspector named Inspector Porei.
• Failure Is the Only Option: De Kampioenen are the worst soccer team in the country, but whenever they have to win a game to keep their field they always triumph...
• Faking the Dead: Xavier fakes his death in one episode after Fernand threatens him with a gun. The others manage to make him believe that he thus has murdered Xavier, and by having the latter haunt him disguised as a spirit, they blackmail him into organizing a party for everyone.
• Flanderisation:
  • The character Marc Vertonghen was originally a bright, straight side character, but as Characterization Marches On he evolved into an infantile, naïve buffoon and the most popular character of the cast. In the last seasons he became more assertive in a comic way.
  • The original seasons mixed drama with comedy, but after a while the show evolved into a slapstick parade centering around Marc most of the time, while the characters were reduced to having personalities not deeper than comic book characters. There still was the odd exception, increasingly so in the last few seasons.
  • Zig-zagged with Carmen. While her most dominant traits (such as being an Attention Whore and Gossipy Hens) do get played up, she actually becomes less of a domineering and unreasonable wife as the series goes on.
  • Pol started off as an Only Sane Man, but later on started adopting some of his uncle's traits, such as excessive greed.
  • Maurice was originally introduced as a quiet, intelligent man with somewhat of a complex personality. After a few seasons, he evolved in a slight Cloudcuckoolander with his intelligence being enormously exaggerated, including him knowing an entire encyclopedia literally by heart and making a puzzle with 1500 pieces in only a few minutes.
• Fiery Redhead: Carmen has (dyed) red hair and she isn't afraid of insulting people, swearing with made up swear words and hit people with her handbag. She has even been in a straitjacket twice, despite it being rarely used in Belgium. Her most wellknown examples:
• Former Teen Rebel: Bieke, as she transformed over the course of the series from a Bratty Teenage Daughter to the Only Sane Man of the cast.
• Friendly Enemy: On their better days DDT and Fernand, despite their hate for the soccer team, also had an underlying friendship with them. Fernand, in one episode, insists on getting invited to the marriage of Marc and Bieke, and DDT was always fairly kind to Doortje, and on multiple occasions tried to be friendly with the team. Fernand even sells his shop to Bieke at a lower price in exchange for getting invited to Pascale's wedding during the series second-to-last episode, because he insists on saying goodbye to them. During the final episode, he even cheers them on during their soccer game.
  • BTW, however, was a flat-out Jerkass who never really got along with any of the Kampioenen. His only redeeming trait was refusing to cook a rabbit and adopting it instead, and this didn't happen until the episode before the one he left the show.
• Gender-Separated Ensemble Episode:
  • The season 3 episode Weekend aan zee has the women go on a trip to the coast while the men stay at home.
  • The Stag Party episodes in season 15 and season 21 also has the men and the women go to a different party.
• Hard Truth Aesop: The season 2 episode 'De Controleur' ('The Inspector') concludes with the almost anarchist aesop that undeclared employment and minor tax evasion are actually a good thing as, according to Boma, it keeps the economy straight.
• Henpecked Husband: All of the men except Maurice were this to some extent, although Marc was the most downplayed example while Xavier was by far the worst example.
• Hufflepuff House: The other members of the soccer team apart from the keeper, striker and coach.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: Especially of the sexual kind... It's part of the reason why there are so many misunderstandings.
• Kavorka Man: Balthazar Boma can be considered this, even though it is in insinuated that most women only love him for his money.
• Long Runner: The TV show ran for 21 seasons, from 1990 until 2011. The comics too, debuting in 1998 will most likely last longer than the show.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Happens in the second movie when Ronald is revealed to be the result of a one-night-stand between Goedele and Oscar after the latter's departure from the series.
• Mall Santa: One episode revolves about the male characters participating in a contest to become the year's mall Santa.
• Manipulative Bastard: Fernand.
• Meaningful Name: The antagonist Dimitri De Tremmerie's initials are "DDT", which is an abbreviation for a type of pesticide.
  • Bernard Theofiel Waterslaeghers' initials are BTW, the name of the subtaxes in Belgium.
  • Maurice De Praetere likes to talk. Praetere is a pun on "praten", Dutch for "to talk".
• Mistaken for Pregnant: A very common plot device which leads to Hilarity Ensues.
• My Hovercraft Is Fullof Eels: Boma thinks he can speak a lot of languages, but he always fails to have a normal conversation with the foreign speaker. Carmen also has this trait.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Nero, the dog, was named after Nero, because Carmen just happened to see a newspaper with Nero in it when she quickly had to come up with a name.
• Old Maid: Pascale, who was originally married to Oscar, but after the actor left the series they were "divorced" off screen. After that Pascale desperately tried to find another husband.
• Only Known by Initials: Dimitri De Tremmerie (DDT) and Bernard Theofiel Waterslaeghers (BTW).
  • Averted, everyone knows their full names, but insist calling them like this.
• Only Sane Man: Pol and Bieke are the most down-to-earth people of the entire cast. Pol does suffer from flanderisation as the series goes on, but even then he still has shades of this. Bieke's ambitions to be on the top of her career shows her rarely "less relaxed" side.
• OO Cis Serious Business: Whenever Xavier is not taking any lip from Carmen, you can bet he's pretty damn serious about whatever is the matter at hand.
• Orwellian Retcon: Love Story, the last episode of the fourth season in which Oscar leaves the series, has two different endings. Originally, Oscar literally disappeared due to a magical trick of Xavier. The ending was heavily criticized because viewers felt it was too unrealistic, so it was stated in the fifth series that Oscar had joined the Hare Krishna movement in Kathmandu. In its reruns, the original ending has been moved from Love Story and replaced by a scene in which Oscar abruptly departs to Tenerife to prevent his father from starting a relationship with DDT's mother on the island.
• Pet the Dog: DDT, Fernand, and even BTW have all gotten to show their better side at least once.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite the title many episodes revolve less about soccer matches and more about the private lives of the characters. Soccer does show up every now and then, though.
• Put on a Bus: Several actors and their characters have been written out from the series. The biggest names to have left are:
  • Pico, who cheated on and divorced Doortje in between seasons 4 and 5, as the actor that portrayed him was getting increasingly difficult to work with due to drinking troubles. He was never heard from again and he doesn't seem to care how his own son is doing neither.
  • Oscar left very abruptly at the end of season 4, abandoning everyone and everything. In a heartbeat, he made the decision to travel after his father and DDT's mother to Tenerife to make sure the two of them wouldn't start a relationship together. He didn't return home however and it was revealed by Pascal in the pilot of season 5 that he joined the Hare Krishna in Nepal. After several years, Pascal had him declared dead.
  • DDT was arrested and sentenced to prison for fiscal fraud. Due to bad behaviour, his sentence kept increasing. He was written out after season 8 because his actor left the channel on which the show aired.
  • His replacement, BTW, only lasted two seasons on account of not being very popular with the viewing audience. In the season 10 finale, he sold his restaurant to Fernand (who already made 2 guest appearances in that season) for a very cheap price after he received a fake letter which said that his restaurant was going to be demolished. In the end, it turned out that Fernand sent him the letter.
• Real-Person Cameo: Some Flemish celebrities have played cameos: Janine Bischops, Constant Vanden Stock, Jean-Marie Pfaff, Eddy Wally, Nicole & Hugo, ...
• Rival Turned Evil: The character development of DDT is somewhat comparable to this trope. In the first eight seasons of the television series, he was The Rival to the soccer team who he had a relationship with that was barely more than that of a typical Sitcom Arch-Nemesis. Since his reappearance in the movies however, he has evolved into the Big Bad of the franchise, although he still manages to be on rather friendly terms with the soccer team and his actions against them make him merely Affably Evil.
• Running Gag:
  • DDT's windows are kicked in by soccer balls, to which he always shouts: "Zal 't gaan, ja?" (will you guys quit it already!)
  • Balthasar Boma's sausages are considered to be tasteless by everyone except Boma himself. Not even the dogs eat it. When his future son-in-law comments they actually taste kinda nice, Boma immediately accepts him as his son.
  • Strangers always seem to confuse the address of the bar with the address of the archenemy's place and vice versa.
  • Whenever Carmen is dusting off things in Balthasar Boma's office Boma will try and give her a pat on her ass.
  • Marcske always does something stupid or wrong.
  • Xavier being a Henpecked Husband.
• The Scrooge: DDT
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Zig-zagged in the movies.
  • The first movie is about the characters travelling to southern France.
  • The second movie takes mostly place around the cafe and the soccer field itself, but has a sequence in which Xavier and Marc go to Thailand to search for Oscar.
  • In the third movie, the characters travel to Africa.
  • The fourth movie is the first of the film series to fully take place in Belgium-one quick cutaway scene in Africa excepted- although a major sequence is set around the carnival in the city of Aalst.
• Series Fauxnale: The third movie was originally ment to be the last installment of the franchise, and as such it featured a Distant Finale in which the characters are seen as old people watching a new generation taking over the soccer team. Nevertheless, the decisions were made to make a fourth movie and a Christmas special after this.
• Slapstick: This element became more dominant as the series progressed.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • After Pico (played by Walter Michiels) was written out of the series his wife Doortje was hooked up with a new character, Pol (played by Ben Rottiers), who shared many of the same character traits as his predecessor.
  • The same can be said about the replacements for the show's villain, DDT. Both BTW and Fernand were introduced in the show and immediately became the new archenemies of the team, because just like DDT they too were consistently inconvenienced by the soccer matches (BTW wanted to open a classy restaurant, while Fernand trained Pigeons that had to race on the same days as the soccer games).
• Sustained Misunderstanding: EVERY episode!
• Stag Party: The guys tried to have an all-out Bachelor party the night before the wedding between Marcske and Bieke in season 15, behind the backs of their wives and girlfriends. The women, however, found out and secretly rearranged their stripper and food services for themselves, sending the police after the men (for jokes). Unfortunately, this resulted in the men spending the night in jail. It gets turned around in the second-to-last episode of the series, where the men after some initial struggles end up having a fun time despite not being allowed to drink alcohol, while the women spend the entire evening bickering and having fights.
  • Of course, as far as the second party was concerned, they also had an important soccer game the next day and didn't want to drink alcohol, but their competitor spiked their drinks and sent some strippers at the party.
• Stoners Are Funny: One episode revolves around a group of hippies camping on the soccer pitch. One of them grants Marc a space cake, which he eats without knowing what's in it. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Being the show's at the time most popular character, DDT eventually made four returning appearances; in the 20th season finale and the second, third and fourth post-series movies as the Big Bad. At the beginning of the movie, he finally got released from prison.
  • Oscar returned in the second post-series movies as well, having been gone for a full twenty-one years both in real-life and In-Universe. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of De Kampioenen, Xavier and Marc travelled to India to look for him and bring him temporarily back to celebrate along with the rest. After some insistence, he accepts. The rest of De Kampioenen had mixed feelings about his return. Oscar also finds out that he has a granddaughter and that Pascale got remarried.
  • Despite originally being written out of the series due to being unpopular with the audience, even BTW made a short appearance in the fourth movie.
  • Both DDT and BTW made multiple guest/cameo appearances in the comic book series.
• Too Dumb to Live: Marc. Although he actually started out as a reasonably smart guy who studied medicine, ongoing Flanderisation made him evolve into this trope.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Balthazar Boma's parents have named their dog also 'Balthazar'. The dog is mentioned in the 1997 episode De Optimist, but has made appearances in the comic books.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: In the episode Het clubblad, Marc pitches an idea about a comic about the club to put in the club magazine. Boma rejects it, saying "Who would be interested in that?". The episode aired in 1997, around the same time the real comic adaptation of the series went into production, which manages to become almost as popular as the tv series itself and still is to this day.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Xavier and Carmen.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: The episode Het knekelveld is remarkable for having a scene with a skeleton dressed as a ghost which is pure Horror.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Carmen has a habit to make fun of her husband Xavier's poor soccer skills, sex life and job at the army. But when other people do exactly the same thing, she is always ready fo furiously go against it.