GOŠK Gabela

Eldin Mustafić spent the 2019–20 season at Gabela. That relegation is the recurring shape of the place: GOŠK climbs, holds on for a season or two, and comes back to the second tier to start again.

The climbing, at least, they have got good at. Three times the club has won the First League of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina — in 2011, 2017 and 2023 — and three more times finished second, in 2008, 2015 and 2022. Loans from HŠK Zrinjski Mostar, among them Marko Kozina and Luka Pršlja, have been part of that rebuilding.

The name on the shirt has changed more often than the tier. It began in 1919 as FK Zmaj, became FK Seljačka Sloga in 1926, then Seljački Športski Klub in 1935, and stopped altogether when the Second World War closed it down. Reopened in 1948 as NK Zmaj, renamed NK Sloga a year later, it finally settled on GOŠK in 1958 and has kept it since. The blue and white, and the Blue Lions with it, outlasted every one of those signboards.

Home is Stadion Perica-Pero Pavlović, which has also worn other names — Podavala, then Erar — before taking the one it carries now. It holds 3,000. Čapljina, a few kilometres up the road, provides the fixture everyone marks in the calendar, whatever it is or is not called elsewhere in Herzegovina.