Lille

Tel Aviv, June 2021: Lille had just won the French title for the first time in a decade, and their reward was a Trophée des Champions meeting with Paris Saint-Germain, the club that had spent that same season trying to catch them. Lille won it 1-0, a small, pointed coda to a season nobody in Paris had expected to lose. Christophe Galtier had built that title on a defence that refused to bend, and by the time it was done, LOSC had gone from also-rans to champions under a manager who left for Nice on the strength of it.

The club itself was born out of scarcity rather than ambition. In 1944, with France still climbing out of occupation, Olympique Lillois and SC Fives merged into a single side, briefly called Stade Lillois before the name Lille Olympique Sporting Club was registered that November. The merger paid off almost immediately: a French championship in 1946, and a Coupe de France double the same year.

Jean Baratt scored for that team and kept scoring through the years that followed, finishing as the club's record marksman with 218 goals, a number no one at LOSC has come close to touching since. Decades later, a young academy graduate named Eden Hazard would help drag the club back to the summit, winning the league and cup double in 2011 under Rudi Garcia.

Since 2012, Lille have played at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, a move away from the old Grimonprez-Jooris ground that had housed them for three decades. Derby du Nord opponents Lens remain the fixture that matters most on the calendar, a rivalry that predates the stadium, the 2011 title, and the club's current name.

Four French championships sit in the LOSC trophy cabinet, the first arriving in 1946 and the most recent in 2021.