AS Eupen

Three domestic titles look modest on paper, but each came from the third tier, and the club has never risen higher on its own merit than Derde Klasse B — won in 1969/70, 1975/76 and again in 2001/02, the win that eventually opened the way to the top flight. Eupen reached the Belgian First Division for the only time in its history in 2010, a target the club had circled for decades from the lower rungs of the pyramid.

The Kehrwegstadion holds 8,363, a mix of seats and standing room that keeps the ground compact and the crowd close to the touchline. Black and white shirts gave the team its nickname, Pandas, worn without much ceremony until the away kit adds a flash of red or yellow.

Survival in 2017/18 is the season locals still bring up. Claude Makelele, the former France midfielder, took over a side that looked destined for relegation and kept it up instead, a run the Belgian press labelled the Miracle of the Kehrweg. Qatar's Aspire Zone Foundation had bought the club in 2012, stepping in after the previous owner was convicted of fraud, and the recruitment that followed brought players such as Akram Afif and Abdelkarim Hassan through Eupen on their way to senior Qatar careers. Goalkeeper Abdul Manaf Nurudeen later became the second Eupen player to appear at a World Cup finals.

Standard Liège is the name that gets called a derby locally, more from provincial proximity than any old rivalry with a name of its own; further down the divisions, Germinal Eupen was the club Eupen measured itself against. None of it explains why the club exists in the first place. That traces to 9 July 1945, when FC Eupen 1920 and La Jeunesse d'Eupen merged into one side, itself the product of clubs going back to 1908 in a town that had already seen its football scene split and rejoin more than once before the merger stuck for good.