Floresta

Floresta had never played a national knockout round until 2017 forced the issue: winning the Taça Fares Lopes handed the club its first-ever place in the Copa do Brasil the following year. Beating Ceará 3-1 the next season lifted the Taça dos Campeões Cearenses in 2018.

In 2020, Floresta finished runner-up in Série D and went up to Série C for the first time in the club's history. Two years later came a first group stage in the Copa do Nordeste. Third place in the Cearense championship in 2019 remains the club's best league finish at home, and the runner-up spot in Série B do Cearense came round twice, in 2017 and again in 2023.

None of that was on the cards when the club was founded on 9 November 1954.

Floresta's shirts are green and white, but its ground is not in Fortaleza itself. Matches are played at the Estádio Olímpico Horácio Domingos de Sousa, known as Domingão, in the town of Horizonte elsewhere in Ceará state, which holds 10,500 people.