Brodarac U19

Long before New Belgrade filled with blocks of flats, the ground by the confluence of the Sava and the Danube belonged to boatmen who worked the barges moored there, and it was after them that the club took its name: Brodari, the bargemen. The club itself came together in 1947, in blue and white, in a district that would later be defined more by its football pitches than its river trade.

Brodarac has never troubled Serbia's senior honours boards, but its youth side did something the first team never managed. In the 2016/17 season the club's U19 team won the Omladinska Liga Srbije two rounds before the campaign was even finished, and in the same year took the Prva Beogradska Liga Group A as well. The league title carried them into the group stage of the UEFA Youth League, where players who had grown up training at Stadion FK Brodarac, a ground that holds 840, found themselves lining up against Manchester United's academy side and Sabaurtbilisi.

Their neighbours across New Belgrade, FK Radnički Novi Beograd, remain the club Brodarac supporters most want to beat, with FK Ušće and FK IMT filling out a local rivalry that rarely reaches beyond the municipality's own leagues.

Aleksa Pejić is the name the academy points to. Born in 1999, he won the Serbian U19 championship with Brodarac before the offers came in, and he took the route many hoped for: spells at FK Proleter Novi Sad, FC Shakhtyor Soligorsk, SK Rapid Wien, FK TSC and FK Željezničar, and eventually a call-up to the Serbia national team, carrying the bargemen's name further than the club itself had ever reached.