Nacional

Funchal climbs from the harbour into the hills, and the club that took shape there on 8 December 1910 has spent its history working around that fact. The ground it uses now, the Estádio da Madeira, sits above the city at Choupana and holds 5,200 — rebuilt in 2007.

The white and black stripes gave the side the name Os Alvinegros. The one that stuck in the wider Portuguese press is Furacão — the Hurricane.

The second of them began the run that produced the best years: fourth place in the Primeira Liga in 2004, fourth again in 2009, and a semi-final in the Portuguese Cup in the 2008/09 season.

The island derby against Marítimo is the fixture the calendar is read around; the history between them adds an edge that the league table rarely supplies.

Nacional's academy has sent players out — Fábio Coentrão and Paulo Assunção among them — but the name that follows the club everywhere belongs to a boy who was there for two years and never played a senior minute for it. Cristiano Ronaldo trained in the Choupana youth setup between 1995 and 1997, before Sporting took him to Lisbon at 12. Thirty years on, the club's own history pages still begin the story of its academy with him.