Guimaraes

The record fee stood for years without much notice outside Portugal until 2010, when Manchester United paid it for a teenager most of the football world had never watched play. Bebe had barely featured for Guimarães's first team before the move, and the transfer became the story people told about the club long after the player himself struggled to make it stick in England.

That habit of sending players on for money rather than keeping them has shaped the club more than any single season in the league table. Rafinha spent two years in Guimarães before Barcelona and the Brazil squad; Edmond Tapsoba left for Bayer Leverkusen for 18 million euros and went on to win the Bundesliga there. None of it changed what Guimarães itself has won, which is modest by comparison — a Portuguese Cup in 2012/13, beating Benfica 2-1 in the final, and a Portuguese Super Cup in 1988 against Porto. The league title has never come; third place, reached four times, is as close as the club has stood.

Guimarães has never played its football anywhere else. The team traces back to 1913, when students in the city formed the sides that would eventually merge into Vitória, and it settled at the Estádio D. Afonso Henriques when the ground opened in 1965. The derby that matters most is against Braga, played out under the name Derby do Minho.

Ask who is remembered best at the club and the answer tends to be N'Dinga, who made 285 appearances, captained the side, and helped it beat Porto for that 1988 Super Cup — a defender's name attached to the biggest result the club had managed at the time.