Kutno

When the old MKS Kutno went bankrupt, the city was left without its football club. That successor, KS Kutno, took shape in 2014. The club it replaced had its own layered past: MKS Kutno was formed in 1993 by merging two local sides, Kutnowianka Kutno, dating back to 1921, and Stal Kutno.

None of that lineage brought a national title. What Kutno has instead is a record of climbing through the regional tiers — Klasa A, the district leagues around Płock and Skierniewice, the fourth division — with promotions won in 1967, 1994 and again after the 2014 refounding, most recently topping the Łódź group of the fourth tier in 2020. It is a history written in the lower divisions of Łódź Voivodeship rather than in cup finals.

Michał Sokołowicz came up through the club's own academy, left to play for Widzew Łódź, and came back to Kutno — the kind of return that keeps a small-town academy meaningful to the people who run it. Games against Pelikan Łowicz and Sokół Aleksandrów Łódzki carry the weight of regional derbies, the closest thing the fixture list offers to a rivalry with real stakes.

The team still plays in yellow and blue, the colours carried over from before the bankruptcy, and still answers to the Kutno Lions — a nickname that outlasted the club it was first attached to.