CS Constantine

The Derby Constantinois pulls in the whole city: CS Constantine against MO Constantine. There is a second, wider rivalry too, the Derby des Hauts-Plateaux against ES Sétif, a fixture between the east's two heavyweight clubs.

The club traces back to 1898 as the Iqbal Association, one of the oldest football clubs in Algeria, and passed through a spell as Chabab Mécanique de Constantine before settling on Club Sportif Constantinois in 1987. Green and black were chosen to stand for hope and grief together, a pairing the club still sums up as "hope in grief". The nickname Les Sanafirs points to a different distinction: six Algerian Ligue 2 titles, more than any other club has managed.

At the top level, the club has taken the championship twice, in 1996–97 and again in 2017–18, and lifted the Algerian Cup in the same two eras, 1991–92 and 2011–12. The 1996–97 title carried the fingerprints of Salim Laïb, who went on to become the club's all-time top scorer with more than 64 goals in over 200 appearances and was central to that campaign.

Chahid Hamlaoui Stadium is the main home, with the smaller Ramadane Ben Abdelmalek ground used alongside it. Roger Lemerre took charge for a season in the early 2010s, while Denis Lavagne and Abdelkader Amrani shared the bench through 2017 to 2019.