Chomutov

The banner these days shows a pirate's head, but it wasn't always so. In 2011, under owner Jaroslav Veverka, the club shed its old name of KLH Chomutov, took the sea-faring identity of Piráti Chomutov, and moved into a new arena — a reinvention that left the club's founding, back in 1945 as ČSK Chomutov, feeling like a different institution altogether.

The best of the old era never reached higher than a shelf below the top: a bronze in 1954–55 and a silver the following season in the Czechoslovak top flight, and nothing since to match it. What Chomutov has built more recently is a habit of climbing rather than staying. The Czech 1. Liga title in 2011–12 sent the team up to the Extraliga, and when it came back down, the same trick worked again in 2014–15. A third promotion push followed in 2023–24, when the club topped the Czech 2. Liga.