Akademija Pandev U19

The Strumica derby against FK Belasica involves two clubs from the same city.

What sets the club apart from most Second and Third League graduates is where it started. Goran Pandev, still playing for the national team at the time, set it up in 2010 as an academy, and the senior side only followed four years later. Promotion up the pyramid came fast after that: the Third League East title, then the Second League, then a place in the Macedonian First League by 2017, with the Macedonian Football Cup arriving in 2018–19 as the high point of the run.

The clearest return on the academy idea is Jani Atanasov, who came through the youth system, went on to collect more than 30 caps for North Macedonia, and left for Bursaspor in 2018 — the kind of departure a project built around developing players is supposed to produce. Pandev has stayed on since as the club's figurehead and sports director, the link between the academy that gave the club its nickname, Pandevtsi, and the team that plays under it now.

The 2023 takeover by Brera Holdings changed the name on the crest, FC AP Brera Strumica replacing FK Akademija Pandev, and with it came the sense of a club now measured by outside investment rather than by what its own academy produces. A Macedonian Cup and two lower-league titles are still the full extent of its senior honours, with a first European campaign yet to follow.