Plzen

On a February night at the Stadio San Paolo in 2013, Viktoria Plzeň beat Napoli 3-0 away in the Europa League round of 32, then held on for a 2-0 win at home. A side that had, that same season, finished top of a Europa League group ahead of Atlético Madrid, Napoli and Lucerne.

The club was founded on 11 June 1911, and its supporters still chant "Červená a modrá" — red and blue — the colours it has carried since. Its home, the Doosan Arena, once held up to 35,000 for a match before reconstruction between 2011 and 2012 cut capacity to 7,425 and then, once building work finished in 2016, settled at 11,700.

Six Czech league titles have gone to Pilsen since independence, the first in 2010/11 and the most recent in 2021/22, alongside two Czech Cups and, from the Czechoslovak era, a cup won in 1971. European football has tested the club three times at Champions League level, most notably in 2011/12, when a group containing Barcelona, Milan and BATE Borisov sent Viktoria down into the Europa League rather than out of Europe altogether. In 2023/24, in the newer Conference League, Plzeň became the first Czech club to win all six of its group-stage matches, then went on to reach the quarter-finals.

Domestically, the rivalry that matters most is with Sparta Prague, a fixture with no love lost whenever the title is on the line, while Slavia Prague and Slovan Liberec complete the contests that place Viktoria among the clubs Czech football calls its big three.