Belgian powerhouses Oud-Heverlee Leuven (OH Leuven) have emerged because the shock bundle of this season’s UEFA Girls’s Champions League.
The reigning Belgian Tremendous League champions are presently preventing for a spot within the UWCL knockouts, of their first-ever look, no much less. Heading into their fifth conflict of the event, OH Leuven sit within the play-off bracket. Ought to they qualify for the subsequent spherical, it can mark an unbelievable maiden voyage in Europe’s prime division.
Commercial
However who’re these spectacular darkish horses who’ve overwhelmed FC Twente and held each Paris FC and Roma to attracts?
Who’re OH Leuven?
OH Leuven have been based on 1st January 2002, following a merger of three Leuven-based ladies’s golf equipment — Stade Leuven, Daring Membership Leuven and Zwarte Duivels Oud-Heverlee. The membership have since progressed by the Belgian leagues, incomes promotion to the highest division. Leuven is within the east of the nation, close to Brussels.
OH Leuven Girls take to the sector in the identical fashion package as the lads’s workforce. A white shirt and shorts edged with a inexperienced collar and sleeve trim, three crimson shoulder stripes on the shirt, and three inexperienced stripes on the shorts.
Commercial
OH Leuven league historical past
After beginning within the third division in 2005/06, the workforce earned promotion to the second division by profitable the promotion play-off. It was within the 2013/14 season that OH Leuven have been promoted to the highest tier of Belgian soccer — the BeNe League — a joint league for Belgium and the Netherlands.
The BeNe League folded after the 2014/15 season, and the Belgian Girls’s Tremendous League was born. In 2024, Leuven completed prime however fell brief within the title play-off. That’s when Anderlecht got here from behind to take their seventh Belgium Tremendous League crown.
OH Leuven went on to win the title in the course of the 2024/25 season. They competed towards well-known league rivals like Anderlecht and Membership Brugge.
Commercial
Who’s the OH Leuven supervisor?
Arno van den Abbeel grew to become assistant coach at OH Leuven in 2020 and was promoted to go coach in 2024. He took on the problem of managing a squad within the Champions League in his first 12 months as an expert soccer supervisor.
Abbeel beforehand managed the Belgium U15s males’s workforce. He has been in and round a soccer teaching setup since 2010, studying the ropes in a number of roles earlier than taking the primary job at OH Leuven Girls.
OH Leuven make Girls’s Champions League historical past
Belgium boasts scrumptious chocolate, candy and savory waffles, and domestically brewed beer. Now, the nation additionally options its first soccer workforce within the Girls’s Champions League. OH Leuven certified to signify Belgium for the primary time this season.
Commercial
The workforce achieved a historic run of ends in 2025, after a 1-1 draw with Paris FC after which a 2-1 victory towards Twente. This marked their first-ever group stage win.
Their house stadium, Gemeentelijk Sportstadion, welcomed celebrity gamers together with Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati of their current Champions League defeat to Barcelona. The consequence didn’t go the best way of the house facet. However greater than 3,350 native followers attended, creating a tremendous ambiance.
Linde Veefkind of OH Leuven shakes palms with Kika Nazareth of FC Barcelona after the UEFA Girls’s Champions League 2025/26 league section match on November 12, 2025. (Photograph by Alex Caparros/Getty Photos)
Commercial
The workforce’s star gamers have helped them problem and maintain their rise. Sara Pusztai scored a historic and dramatic late winner within the current match towards Twente. The Hungarian worldwide midfielder scored three targets final season because the reigning Belgian Girls’s Tremendous League champions celebrated success once more.
Zenia Mertens is the engine throughout the workforce. The Belgian worldwide has made probably the most appearances for the membership and provides stability whereas pushing the workforce ahead.
Followers may have been forgiven for pondering targets could be tough to come back by in dropping striker Hannah Eurlings, who had scored 13 targets final season. Nonetheless, 22-year-old ahead Jada Conijnenberg is stepping proper up and rapidly turning into a fan favorite.
It was Conijnenberg who equalised for the Belgian facet of their Champions League fixture towards the legendary ladies’s workforce AS Roma. OH Leuven weathered a number of assaults, and the goalkeeper Lowiese Seynhaeve ran out as participant of the match, making some world-class saves.
Commercial
The workforce strikes again to their league priorities with a blockbuster fixture towards Anderlecht scheduled for thirteenth December.
Associated articles from Her Soccer Hub:
Contained in the success of OL Lyonnes: Europe’s most embellished soccer dynasty
UK Soccer Associations submit joint bid to host FIFA Girls’s World Cup 2035
Magdalena Eriksson declares retirement from iconic Sweden worldwide profession