Football and Beer

Noticed on a Belgian sport web site today (www.sport.be) that they have news of the MLS. Maybe the Belgians have an affinity for US professional soccer because the Belgian league, called the Jupiler League, is also second-rate.

Jupiler comes from the sponsor, which, not surprisingly is a beer. It's referred to familiarly as Jupe, which is interesting because that's the French word for a skirt. Jupe is one of four or five mass-market pilsners made in Belgium, along with Stella Artois, Maes, Primus, and maybe another one I'm forgetting. Stella and Jupe are both in the Anheuseur-Busch Inbev stable. To our way of thinking, Stella, which has a significant cult following in the US, is the best of the lot. That makes it, as a former colleague likes to say, the fourth worst beer in Belgium.