Excelsior

Kralingen was still finding its footing as part of Rotterdam when a group there put a football club together in 1902. The name they chose said what they wanted from it — something better, something rising — and the badge has stayed close to the neighbourhood ever since, both in what people call the club and in where it plays.

Excelsior have spent most of their existence circling the top flight rather than settling into it, and the record shows why: three Eerste Divisie titles, in 1973–74, 1978–79 and 2005–06. There was also a run to the 1930 KNVB Cup final, lost to Feyenoord, a defeat made sharper by the fact that Excelsior had beaten the same club 5-0 to win the Zilveren Bal not long before.

Staying in the Eredivisie, or fighting back into it, has become the club's recurring plot. The promotion play-offs have delivered more than once — Sparta beaten in 2010, another route up secured in 2014, ADO Den Haag seen off on penalties in 2022, and Jong PSV put away 5-0 in 2025. Van Donge & De Roo Stadion, known to most as Woudestein, holds only 4,500, a reminder that Excelsior's battles are fought on a smaller scale than the clubs they keep meeting at the division's edge.

That edge is where the club sits now, back in the play-off picture as often as not, still asking the same question each season: hold a place among the big Rotterdam names, or go and win it back.