KAMAZ

Second-tier football in Naberezhnye Chelny still runs on the schedule of a lorry plant. The team that plays in the Russian First League grew out of a works side at the press and frame shop, formed in November 1981 under the name Trud-PRZ and playing in the amateur championships of the Russian republic.

The stretch that people in the city still measure everything against ran from 1993 to 1997, when KAMAZ played in the Russian top flight. Valery Chetverik built the club and coached it there, and in 1994 took it to sixth — the highest KAMAZ has finished. Viktor Panchenko scored 21 goals the season before that and finished as the championship's leading scorer.

The promotions came first, though. KAMAZ won the Soviet First League in 1989 and went up; three years later, with the Soviet structure gone and a new Russian pyramid in its place, the club won the Central zone of the First League and went up again. Winning your way into the top division twice in three seasons, under two different national federations, is the part of the story that does not repeat anywhere else in the club's history.

The ground carries the works name too, on Moskovsky Prospekt, and it was rebuilt from the stands up in 2015 — the old terracing came down and quick-build structures went in, leaving a capacity of 6,248. The blue and white are the plant's colours; the green change kit is Tatarstan's.

The First League is where the club sits now, a division below the level it reached three decades ago.