Ansan Greeners

Ansan's first goal as a professional club belonged to an Uzbek striker. Bahodir Nasimov scored it in the club's opening match of the 2017 season, the first competitive fixture played by a side that had existed for only a few months.

The city had needed one. Ansan Mugunghwa FC, the police-run team that had used the city as its base, closed down, and the municipal government built a replacement from scratch — the club announced on 22 July 2016, a head coach in Lee Heung-sil appointed that October, and a place in the second tier taken up the following spring. The mayor of Ansan chairs the board. The city owns the club outright.

Nine years on, the trophy cabinet is empty. The closest the Greeners have come to changing that was 2020, when a seventh-place finish in K League 2 was enough for a promotion play-off place. It ended there.

They play at the Ansan Wa~ Stadium, which holds 35,000. The teal home shirt gave the club its nickname before it had players to fill it: Green Wolves.

The fixture that matters most is with FC Anyang, and the reason is a railway. Both cities sit on Line 4 of the Gyeonggi Province network, which is how the Line 4 Derby got its name. Neither club has won anything. The proximity is the point.