FC Rostov

The fixture with Krasnodar carries more weight than the league table around it, a rivalry with no history to speak of before 2011 but with more than fifty matches banked since, most of them going Krasnodar's way. Locals still talk of the older, quieter derby with SKA, though it belongs to a different era of the city's football. Neither explains why this club exists: it started life in 1930 as the works team of the Rostselmash combine harvester factory, and carried the factory's name — through Selmashstroy, Selmash, Traktor and Torpedo along the way — until 2003, when it became simply FC Rostov.

The old Torpedo-era ground, later renamed Olimp after Viktor Ponedelnik, held 15,840 and served the club from its founding year until 2018. That is when Rostov moved into Rostov Arena, built for the World Cup and holding 45,415, still in yellow and blue, still with the old nickname Muzhiki attached to the shirt.

Rostov have one major trophy: the 2013/14 Russian Cup, won on penalties against Krasnodar, 6-5. Two other campaigns stand out for different reasons. In 2008 the club won the First Division to force its way back into the Premier League, the kind of promotion that resets a club's ambitions. Then, in 2015/16, it went further than the cup ever took it, finishing second in the league, two points behind champions CSKA, and earned a place in the Champions League group stage the following season — still the high-water mark of the club's history in Russia's top flight, a level it had not touched even in its best Soviet-era finish, fourth place in the First League back in 1991.

No single manager or player from that run gets talked about the way Viktor Ponedelnik does. A forward from the Soviet era, he scored the winning goal for the USSR in the 1960 European Championship final, and the club gave his name to the ground it played in for decades before the World Cup arena replaced it.