Feyenoord

Feyenoord beat Celtic in the final of the European Cup in 1970, then went to the Intercontinental Cup and won that too, in the same year.

The ground he worked in is the reason for the club's other name in the city. Stadion Feyenoord opened as a bowl of steep, overhanging tiers, and Rotterdammers called it de Kuip — the tub. The name stuck so firmly that the official one is now the technicality. It holds 47,500.

The club came out of the Feijenoord district on the south bank of the Maas, the working docks side of the river, and was formally established in 1908. The nickname the supporters use, De club aan de Maas, points at the water rather than at any trophy. Red and white shirts, black shorts, black socks.

Sixteen league titles sit in the record, spread unevenly: five before the war, a cluster through the 1960s and early 1970s around Happel's side, then long gaps. The 1999 championship was followed by eighteen years without one. When the title came back in 2017, and again in 2023, it ended a barren spell that had begun to feel structural rather than temporary.

Europe has been kinder in the second tier of competition — the UEFA Cup in 1974, and again in 2002, that second one won in de Kuip itself, the final having been scheduled there before Feyenoord reached it.

What has not returned is the European Cup. More than fifty years on from 1970, the club that won it first among Dutch sides has not been back to that final, and the Dutch league's place in the modern economics of the competition makes the route back narrower each season.