James Storme died on September 12, 2026, aged 83. The Belgian midfielder was part of the KAA Gent side that won the Belgian Cup in 1964, the club's first major trophy, after trailing KFC Diest 2-0 and winning 4-2 in extra time. That comeback in the final remains the defining moment of his playing career.
Storme operated in midfield, the engine room of a Gent team that had spent years chasing silverware without landing it. The 1964 final changed that. Down two goals to Diest, Gent pulled level and then finished the job in the extra period, scoring twice more to seal a 4-2 win. For a club that had never won a major competition, the night carried weight. Storme's contribution in the middle of the park helped turn a losing position into a trophy.
He left Gent for Standard Liège later in the 1960s. Standard were among Belgium's strongest sides in that decade, competing regularly at the top of the First Division, and Storme added top-level experience to a career that had already taken him to a cup final. The details of his time in Liège are thin in the record, but the move itself speaks to his standing as a player. He finished his professional playing days at VG Oostende, the coastal club where he would later begin his work as a coach.
Coaching came naturally after his playing career ended. Storme took charge at VG Oostende, the same club where he had closed out his time on the pitch, and spent the 1990s working at other clubs as well. The specific names of those clubs are not in the public record, but his decades in the game covered both sides of the touchline. He was a footballer who became a manager, a common path in Belgian football, and he kept working in the sport into his later years.
The cause of death was heart disease, according to the reports that carried the news of his passing. He was 83. He died on September 12, 2026, a date that will sit alongside the 1964 cup final in any account of his life in football.
Storme's career spanned an era when Belgian football was producing sides that could compete across Europe. The 1960s saw Standard Liège and Anderlecht dominate domestically, and the national team reached the 1966 World Cup qualifiers with genuine ambition. Storme moved through that landscape as a professional, first at Gent, then at Standard, then at Oostende. He was not a headline name in the way of some of his contemporaries, but he played at a level that required real ability, and he won a trophy that mattered deeply to his first club.
The 1964 cup final is the fact that survives him. Gent had never won a major trophy before that afternoon. They were two goals down against Diest, and they came back to win 4-2 after extra time. Storme was in the middle of it, a midfielder doing the unglamorous work that lets a team claw its way back into a game. When the final whistle went, Gent had their first piece of major silverware, and Storme had his name attached to the club's history.
He spent the rest of the 1960s at Standard Liège, then moved to VG Oostende to finish his playing career. At Oostende he stayed on as a coach, the first step in a second career that carried into the 1990s. The clubs he coached in that decade are not named in the reports of his death, but the work itself kept him in football for years after he stopped playing.
Heart disease ended his life on September 12, 2026. He was 83 years old. The news came with a simple set of facts: a midfielder, a cup win in 1964, a career that ran through Gent, Standard Liège, and VG Oostende, and a coaching stint that followed. For the supporters of Gent, the 1964 final remains the reason his name is remembered. For anyone who watched him play, the comeback against Diest was the proof of what he could do. James Storme died at 83, and the 4-2 win that made his club's history goes with him.
According to Dead-People.