Liège

Two league titles came back to back, in 1952 and 1953, half a century after the club's first three. That earlier run — 1896, 1898, 1899 — belongs to a Belgian championship still finding its shape; the 1950s pair was won against a national league that had grown up. Between the two clusters sit more than fifty years, and after the second, nothing. The trophies since have been cup competitions: the League Cup in 1986, then the Belgian Cup in 1990, which carried Liège into the Cup Winners' Cup and a quarter-final the following season. The furthest they went in Europe was earlier still, a Fairs Cup semi-final in 1963-64.

The name that travelled furthest out of Rocourt was not a scorer's. In 1990 the club refused to release midfielder Jean-Marc Bosman, and the case he brought became the Bosman ruling — the judgment that rewrote how players move between clubs across Europe.

Those troubles started with the ground. The Stade Vélodrome de Rocourt was sold, bankruptcy followed in 1995, and the club merged with RFC Tilleur-Saint-Nicolas and dropped down the divisions. What came next was twenty years without a home: Tilleur, then Seraing, then Ans. Titles in the third division in 1996 and 2007 and the fourth in 2015 mark the climb back rather than any peak. In 2015 the club returned to Liège, to a new Stade de Rocourt holding 3,500.

Paul Deschamps scored 224 goals for the club, more than anyone before or since. The red and dark blue he wore gave Les Sang et Marine their nickname.

The founders were cyclists. Members of the Liège cycling union set up Liège Football Club on 14 February 1892; royal status arrived in 1920, and with it the name RFC Liégeois.