Al-Rayyan

It came together in 1967, absorbing a local side, Al Nusoor, in the process.

The trophies arrived in a rush that now looks like a different era. The seventh came in 1994–95; the eighth waited until 2015–16, a gap of 21 years that shaped how two generations of supporters understood the club — one that remembered winning, one that had only been told about it.

The cup record filled some of that silence. Six wins in the Emir of Qatar Cup, the first in 1998–99, kept the side in the conversation through the drought, and the run of 2010, 2011 and 2013 came with the club near the top of the domestic game again without quite converting it into a league.

The ground tells its own story about what happened to Qatar in those years. The old stadium was pulled down to make room for the 2022 World Cup build, and what reopened in 2020 on the same site — the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium, 45,032 seats — belongs to the tournament as much as to the club. The team plays in red and black and is known as The Lions, though in Arabic the black shirts gave rise to Al-Aswad.

The most recent addition is the QSL Cup, won in 2025–26. It is the club's first trophy of any kind since the Sheikh Jassim Cup in 2018, and the league title that has now been out of reach for a decade remains the measure everyone applies here.