Monaco

No fixture on the calendar sits like the one against Nice. The Derby de la Côte d'Azur has carried the rivalry between the two Riviera clubs for decades.

That standing is real. Monaco have won the French championship eight times, from 1961 through to 2017, and lifted the Coupe de France five times between 1960 and 1991. The dates cluster oddly. It has never had the natural fanbase of a Marseille or a Lyon — the principality's population is small, the Stade Louis II in Fontvieille holds 16,360 — so the trophies have tended to arrive in waves tied to whoever was building the squad at the time, rather than an unbroken institutional weight behind it.

Founded in 1924, the club has built its reputation less on continuity than on production. Monaco has been a way station for players who left it more famous than they arrived: George Weah passed through in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Youri Djorkaeff in the 1990s, Kylian Mbappé between 2013 and 2017 before his move to Paris Saint-Germain made him a global name.

None of them matches Jean-Luc Ettori for identification with the club. He is Monaco's record appearance-holder, a goalkeeper who spent his entire career there through the club's championship and cup-winning years of the 1980s, present for the run that still anchors the club's honours list.