ABC Braga

Their finest hour came away from home in 1994, when ABC Braga stepped onto court against TEKA Santander in the final of the EHF Champions League and left with the runners-up medal rather than the trophy. That run belonged to the team Ukrainian coach Oleksandr Donner had assembled around a trio of Russian imports, Viktor Tchikoulaev, Konstantin Dolgov and Wladimir Bolotski, and through the 1990s that side collected league title after league title.

The financial crash of the following decade took the foreign contracts with it. Jorge Rito, who took over the rebuilding, had no imports left to work with and turned instead to whoever the academy could produce — Pedro Marques among them, a player who stayed long enough to become both captain.

Founded in 1933 as an academic sports club, ABC still carries basketball in its name and its abbreviation, though handball has long since become the business it is known for; roller hockey, athletics still run alongside it, tying the club to the University of Minho whose name has sat next to its own on shirts and sponsorship deals for years. Twelve Portuguese Cups and a Challenge Cup won against Benfica in 2016 sit in the record books behind those league years, enough to rank the club third among Portuguese handball sides, ahead of everyone except Porto and Sporting.

The insolvency that hit the professional arm in 2023 could have ended the story there; instead the sporting rights passed back to the non-profit club within months; and the team carried on, as it always has, in the yellow shirts that gave "Os Amarelos" its name. They still play in the same low, close hall in Braga, the Pavilhão Flávio Sá Leite.