Béni-Khalled

Béni Khalled sits a short drive from the Cap Bon coast, close enough to Menzel Bouzelfa and Grombalia that a Sunday fixture against either name empties the town in the same breath it fills the Stade de Béni Khalled. Against Menzel Bouzelfa, four kilometres up the road, it is a city derby in the plainest sense; against Grombalia, ten kilometres off, locals call it a hot regional derby, and neither needs a trophy on the line to draw a crowd.

The club plays as Étoile Sportive de Béni Khalled, though almost nobody in town uses the full name. The Tunisian Arabic reading of its initials gave it the nickname Lasbiyka, and that is what sticks. Founded in 1946, ESBK spent its best-remembered season in Ligue 1 in 1993 before relegation in 1998 sent it back down, and a second drop in 2004, after an 11th-place finish in a 12-team table, settled the club into the rhythm of Ligue 2 and Ligue 3 it has kept ever since. Promotion from the fourth tier around 1965 first opened the way upward; the Ligue 2 title in 2003 remains the high point since, with a runners-up finish in the League Cup a year earlier, lost to CS Sfaxien, standing as the nearest the club has come to silverware at the top level.

Red and white have stayed the colours throughout, worn on a shirt with a red body and white sleeves that supporters would recognise from any decade of the club's history.

Ali Kaabi took charge of the team in his post-playing years, one of a handful of Tunisian football names who have sat on the Béni Khalled bench. Before any of that, it was Abdesslam Bouhouch who gave the town its clearest link to the country's bigger stage, coming through at ES Béni Khalled before Club Africain came calling.