Şamaxı

Qarabağ sits across the fixture list as the club Şamaxı has never quite matched. The side has worn three names since 1997. A Premier League debut followed in 1999, and in the summer of 2004 the club was renamed İnter Bakı — the identity under which it did its best work, taking the league title in 2007/08 and again in 2009/10, then adding the CIS Cup in 2011.

Money problems set in between 2015 and 2017, and on 28 October 2017 the club became Keşlə. Two Azerbaijan Cups arrived under that name, in 2017/18 and 2020/21, before the Premier League approved a second rebrand on 6 April 2022: Keşlə became Şamaxı, and the operation moved out of the capital to Şamaxı itself. The step down was immediate — a season in the second tier — but so was the way back, with the First League won in 2023/24 and Premier League football restored.

The club now plays in blue and white at the Şamaxı Şəhər Stadionu, a ground built for the town rather than for a capital-city crowd — 2,200 seats, in a stadium that has watched a Baku club become a Şamaxı one.