IFK Göteborg

Gothenburg has two football tribes, and IFK sits on the workers' side of neither divide alone. GAIS shares the same stretch of the city, and the meetings between the two carry the name Arbetarderbyt, the Workers' Derby, a label that has stuck through the decades of matches. The other fixture, against Örgryte IS, runs under the wider banner of Göteborgsderby, and between the two rivalries IFK has spent well over a century measuring itself against its own city before looking anywhere else.

That measuring began on 4 October 1904. The club plays in blue and white vertical stripes, which gave rise to its everyday nickname, Blåvitt — simply "blue-white" — a name used far more often than the older Änglarna, "the Angels," a tag from the 1950s tied to a period when the team's football was judged easy on the eye.

The trophy count runs long: 18 Swedish championships, 8 Swedish Cups, a domestic Super Cup won in 2008. What sets IFK apart in Sweden is what happened outside the country. The club won the UEFA Cup twice, in 1981–82 and again in 1986–87, a feat few Scandinavian sides have matched even once, and it reached the semi-finals of the European Cup on two further occasions, in 1985–86 and 1992–93. Home matches since 2009 have been played at Gamla Ullevi, which holds 18,454.

None of it changes what decides a season in the eyes of the club's own supporters: the derby days against GAIS and Örgryte, fixtures where the league table means less than the result on the day.