Georges Serge Grün (born 25 January 1962) is a retired Belgian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

defender, who currently works as a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

presenter for the

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...

matches at RTL TVI.

Club career

Grün started his career with

Anderlecht Anderlecht (, ) is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the south-western part of the region, it is bordered by the City of Brussels, Forest, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, and Saint-Gilles, as well as the ...

in Belgium, where he spent eight seasons, winning the

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay ...

in 1983, as well as three consecutive Belgian First Division titles between 1984 and 1987, among other trophies; he also reached another UEFA Cup final with the club in 1984, where they lost out to English side

Tottenham Tottenham () is a town in North London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Wal ...

, however. Grün joined Italian club

Parma Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, music, art, prosciutto (ham), cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 inhabitants, Parma is the second m ...

in 1990. During his time with the club, he established himself as one of the best defenders in Serie A, winning the

Coppa Italia The ("Italy Cup") is an annual knockout cup competition in Italian football organized by the FIGC until the 2009–10 season and the Lega Serie A ever since. History The beginning of the tournament was turbulent, due to the complexity of ...

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engin ...

, and the

Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The cup was, chronologically, the second seasonal inter-European club competition organised by UEFA. The tournam ...

in 1993 under manager

Nevio Scala Nevio Scala (; born 22 November 1947) is an Italian football sporting director, coach and former player. Throughout his footballing career, he played as a midfielder for several Italian clubs, and won several titles during his time with A.C. Mi ...

. Following a series of injury struggles during the 1993–94 season, however, he returned to his former club in 1994. In 1996, he returned to Italy once again, to play for Reggiana; however, he was no longer paid by the club between February and May 1997, and retired at the end of the 1996–97 season.

International career

Grün made his international debut in a 2–0 win against

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

UEFA Euro 1984 The 1984 UEFA European Football Championship final tournament was held in France from 12 to 27 June 1984. It was the seventh UEFA European Championship, a competition held every four years and endorsed by UEFA. At the time, only eight countries ...

, on 13 June, marking the occasion with a goal. He is most famous in his home country for scoring the

away goal The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the team that ...

that qualified Belgium at the expense of their neighbours Netherlands in the 1986 World Cup qualifying rounds. Belgium would go on to a very respectable fourth-place finish. He played in three

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament has ...

s for the

Belgium national football team The Belgium national football teamfrench: Équipe nationale belge de footballgerman: Belgische Fußballnationalmannschaft officially represents Belgium in men's international football since their maiden match in 1904. The squad is under th ...

(1986,

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicis ...

and

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nels ...

). He made his World Cup debut against

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

on 3 June 1986. Grün is the sixth–most–capped player for Belgium with 77 appearances between 1984 and 1995, also scoring six goals.

Style of play

Usually a defender, Grün was capable of playing both as a man-marking

centre-back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

, or ''stopper'', and as a

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, due to his elegance, as well as his ability carry the ball out from the back and advance into midfield, or play it out on the ground, which enabled him to start attacking plays with his passing after winning back possession. He was even deployed as a

defensive midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundari ...

in front of the back-line on occasion.

Honours

Player

; Anderlecht * Belgian First Division: 1980–81, 1984–85, 1985–86, 1986–87 *

Belgian Cup The Belgian Cup (french: link=no, Coupe de Belgique; nl, Beker van België []; german: link=no, Belgischer Fußballpokal) is the main Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in Belgium, run by the Belgia ...

: List of Belgian Cup finals, 1987-88, 1988-89 *

Belgian Supercup The Belgian Super Cup ( nl, Belgische Supercup, ; french: Supercoupe de Belgique; german: Belgischer Fußball-Super Cup), ''Pro League Supercup'', is a Belgian club competition played as a single match between the Belgian First Division A champi ...

: 1985, 1987 *

: 1982–83 (

winners Winners Merchants International L.P is a chain of off-price Canadian department stores owned by TJX Companies. It offers brand name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, fine jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. Products are at a 20-60 ...

), 1983-84 ( runners-up) *

European Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The cup was, chronologically, the second seasonal inter-European club competition organised by UEFA. The tournam ...

: 1989-90 ( runners-up) *

Jules Pappaert Cup Trophy Jules Pappaert or Pappaert cup is a Belgian football trophy since 1953 and is awarded annually to a club in the first, second or third division of the Belgian Pro League with the longest uninterrupted series of unbeaten games. The award i ...

: 1983, 1985 *

Bruges Matins The Matins of Bruges ( nl, Brugse Metten) was the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges and their supporters, a political faction in favour of French rule, on 18 May 1302 by the members of the local Flemish militia. It has been ...

: 1985, 1988 ; Parma *

: 1991–92 *

1992–93 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 '' Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since t ...

(

), 1993-94 ( runners-up) *

European Super Cup The UEFA Super Cup is an annual super cup football match organised by UEFA and contested by the winners of the two main European club competitions; the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. The competition's official name was originall ...

: 1993

International

Belgium *

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal en ...

( fourth place)

Individual

Ballon d'Or The Ballon d'Or (; ) is an annual football award presented by French news magazine '' France Football'' since 1956. Between 2010 and 2015, in an agreement with FIFA, the award was temporarily merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year (f ...

nomination: 1993 * DH The Best RSC Anderlecht Team Ever (2020) *

IFFHS The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) is an organisation that chronicles the history and records of association football. It was founded in 1984 by Alfredo Pöge in Leipzig. The IFFHS was based in Abu Dhabi for so ...

All Time Belgium Dream Team (2021)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grun, Georges 1962 births 1986 FIFA World Cup players 1990 FIFA World Cup players 1994 FIFA World Cup players A.C. Reggiana 1919 players Belgian expatriate footballers Belgian Pro League players Belgian footballers Belgium international footballers Expatriate footballers in Italy Belgian expatriate sportspeople in Italy Association football central defenders Living people Parma Calcio 1913 players R.S.C. Anderlecht players Serie A players UEFA Euro 1984 players People from Schaerbeek Association football defenders Belgian people of German descent Footballers from Brussels