FC Copenhagen

Ståle Solbakken went down on the pitch in 2001. His heart had stopped, and for a moment the medical staff were working on a man who was clinically dead in front of a home crowd that had no idea what it was watching. He survived, played on, and by 2006 was back at the club as manager — this time long enough to take Copenhagen into the Champions League last 16. He left and returned again in 2013, staying until 2020.

The club he shaped was still young by Danish standards. FC Copenhagen was formed on 1 July 1992, a merger: Kjøbenhavns Boldklub was close to bankruptcy, Boldklubben 1903 could not afford to fix its ground, and the two agreed to become one team, with B 1903 handing over its top-flight licence and KB dropping down to serve as the reserve side. Roy Hodgson took the new club to its first championship in 2000–01, the start of a run that now stands at 16 Superliga titles and ten Danish Cups.

None of it counts for more than derby day, when Brøndby comes to town in what both sides call the New Firm. Copenhagen have won 63 of the 134 meetings between the clubs to Brøndby's 41, and the goal still replayed from that fixture is Sibusiso Zuma's scissor-kick in 2001 — the moment the club itself rates as the best in its history.

Copenhagen have never played anywhere else. Parken opened in September 1992 on the site of the old national stadium, built for a club that did not yet exist when the plans were drawn, and it has held 38,190 people ever since — the only home the Lions have known.