Today, on Thursday 29th April 2021, Beerschot celebrates its icon Rik Coppens with the inauguration of his bronze statue. Exactly on the day "The King of 'het Kiel'" would have celebrated his 91st birthday.
The statue is an initiative from the Beerschot supporters, who financed it together with the club and our present icon Rapha Holzhauser. It will be revealed this afternoon by the sculptor himself and Frank Raes, author of Rik Coppens' biography.
Rik Coppens' statue will be on show in our Fan Shop. In the near future it will get a permanent place, either in our Museum XIII or at the entrance of our Olympic Stadium.
At the same time our club will present its own and original Coppens Collection Line, with amongst others a white t-shirt featuring the famous Coppens corner photo and a black t-shirt with a Coppens chest photo. On top of that Coppens socks in collaboration with COPA FOOTBALL, as well as three pins from the Coppens era. And last but not least we will be launching 200 golden and numbered "Golden Boot"-keyrings. "These key rings will become an exclusive collector's item", head marketing Finn Van der Kaa says. "Fans will be fighting to get hold of the number 1 and number 13 ones."
So it's Rik Coppens Time at Beerschot. And rightly so for a player who starred in the Olympic Stadium from 1946 until 1961. During that period he played 362 games and scored 258 goals. Rik was a crowd pleaser, an icon for Beerschot, exceptionally gifted with a great technique, a deadly finisher, a joker and "enfant terrible". He made his debut in the first team as a 16 year old on December 29th 1946 and immediately scored twice in Beerschot's 4-2 home win against Eendracht Aalst.
Rik Coppens was topscorer in the Belgian First Divisions in 1951-1952 (23 goals), 1952-1953 (35 goals) and 1954-1955 (35 goals). In 1954 he won the very first Golden Boot-trophy that crowns Belgium's best footballer. He was capped 47 times for Belgium's national team "The Red Devils", scoring 21 goals. After his playing career he became a coach at Berchem Sport and also had two spells as Beerschot boss, from 1974 until 1977 and later on from 1982 until 1984.
Rik Coppens died on February 5th 2015 at the of 84 years.
