Castellón

The closest Castellón came to Spain's top table was a Copa del Rey final, in 1973, and the club lost it — a defeat that still stands as the biggest night in its history for want of anything bigger since. Two more near misses followed the same shape: a Copa RFEF final in 2015, and three separate seasons, 1940-41, 1980-81 and 1988-89, when the club finished second in Segunda División and stayed there. A title did come in 2002-03, when Castellón won its Segunda División B group outright, though the club's only spell in the Primera División ended with fourth place in 1942-43 and no return trip since.

The club traces back to 20 July 1922, formed out of the reorganisation of Sociedad Deportiva Cervantes. The founders had wanted to call it Castellón Foot-ball Club; Club Deportivo Castellón was what stuck. The black and white of the albinegros arrived a few years later, in 1925, and has not changed since. In 1991 the club restructured as a Sociedad Anónima Deportiva, the legal form that still governs it.

Matches are played at the Estadio Castalia, known these days under its sponsored name, Estadio Skyfi Castalia, which holds 15,000. The fixture against Villarreal carries its own name, the Derbi de la Plana, for the shared stretch of coast the two clubs come from; the meeting with Levante is billed as the Valencian derby.

Vicente del Bosque wore the Castellón shirt before he won a World Cup as a manager, one line on a résumé built almost entirely elsewhere. Gaizka Mendieta passed through too, on the way to the career that made his name in Valencia and Lazio. It is del Bosque's spell here, brief as it was, that Castellón supporters still bring up first when the club's name turns up outside Spain.