Scroll down the Westerlo squad list for 2013-14 and you will find, somewhere in the second tier of contributors, a thin Belgian teenager who scored three goals that year. His name was Leandro Trossard. A decade later he would be lifting trophies with Arsenal and playing for Belgium at a World Cup. In 2013-14, he was a 19-year-old learning the second-tier game in a small Antwerp-province town, scoring just often enough to be noticed.
The season ran from 2 August 2013 to 27 April 2014, branded as the Belgacom League. Westerlo won it, comfortably enough that they took both the second and third period titles outright. Eupen had grabbed the first period, but once Westerlo's machine started moving there was no real contest. The arithmetic of Belgian football handed the remaining playoff spots to Sint-Truiden and Mouscron-Peruwelz as the highest finishers not yet qualified, third and fourth respectively. None of it mattered for the top of the table. Westerlo were already champions, already promoted, already gone.
Trossard had come up through Genk's academy and arrived at Westerlo on loan as a developing winger. He was not the focus of the team. The focus was Raphael Lecomte, who scored six. The focus was the experienced Belgian striker Kevin Vandenbergh. Trossard, with his three goals and his quick feet, was a project. What is notable is not that he was the leading scorer that year, because he was not. What is notable is that the second division was where he learned to play professional football week in and week out. A few seasons later he would be the engine of Genk's league-winning side. A few more and he would be in the Premier League. A few more and he would be scoring for Arsenal in Champions League knockouts.
Trossard was not alone. The 2013-14 scoring tables included Christian Kabasele, a Eupen defender who would later sign for Watford and play in the Premier League for years. Antonio Jakolis, Salomon Nirisarike, Thibault Peyre, John Bostock - all of them would have careers extending well past this division. The Belgian Second Division of the early 2010s was a curious sorting machine. Most of its players would not rise. But the league was just close enough to Europe's top tiers, in standard and in geography, that the ones who could play almost always got found.
The Wikipedia article on the 2013-14 season is, like most season articles, a long list of stat tables. It records the goals, the period winners, the team movements. What it cannot record is which apparently unremarkable contributor was about to disappear into the Premier League and reappear, ten years later, with a goal celebration in front of 60,000 fans at the Emirates. That story is hidden in plain sight. Three goals for Westerlo, 2013-14. The first line of a much longer one.
Westerlo plays at Het Kuipje (51.09N, 4.91E) in the Antwerp province, roughly 50 km east of Antwerp city and 60 km northeast of Brussels. Nearest airports are Antwerp (EBAW) and Liege (EBLG). Most 2013-14 league clubs were within a 120 km radius of Brussels, easy to overfly in a single short hop. Recommended viewing altitude 3,000 to 5,000 ft over the Kempen plain east of Antwerp.