Leicester is closely linked to OH Leuven, the first announced opponent coming up in pre-season, with Jon Rudkin and Susan Whelan both on the board at OH Leuven. Top is of course involved and chairman of the board. We all know that Nigel Pearson has been in charge of both Leicester and OH Leuven.
The Leicester influence at OH Leuven is major as players from the first team and development squad have been on loan at the club for several years and gained good alternative progress along the line.
The Leicester establishment and King Power took over the ownership of OH Leuven back in 2016 and has since seen a grand development resulting in a promotion and seeing the club well established in the Belgian top flight.
So far players such as Andy King, Josh Eppiah, Filip Benkovic, Daniel Iversen and George Hirst are among a grand group of players to be on loan and doing a job at OH Leuven, but there are also others that has seen great progress while playing in Belgium.
Midfielder Khamal Sowah joined Leuven from Leicester and established himself as one young exciting player in OH Leuven team, attracting special interest from a number of clubs and made a move to Club Brugge for a fee of £7million. Sowah played 63 league games and scored 11 goals at OH Leuven from 2018 to 2021.
Elliott Moore is another young player that made the most out of his stay with OH Leuven and added up 61 league games and scored 7 goals while on loan from 2017 to 2019 and later made a new move to Oxford United for an undisclosed fee. He is now a well established defender on a long term deal at Kassam Stadium.
Polish international Bartosz Kapustka who joined Leicester from Krakowia also had a brief loan spell at OH Leuven. He played 20 league games and scored 3 goals while at Den Dreef from 2018 to 2019.
There are currently no players from Leicester at the club at present, but still this works both ways as younger prospects in the OH Leuven set up has also from time to time been on visits to Leicester to gain experience and train with the development squad.
It will be interesting in the future to see how this partnership will work on as both clubs progress in their own domestic leagues.
List of players in both camps
- Goalkeepers
- Daniel Iversen
- Defenders
- Elliott Moore
- Filip Benkovic
- Midfield
- Kamal Sowah
- Andy King
- Bartosz Kapustka
- Forwards
- Josh Eppiah
- George Hirst
- Nathan Opoku
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