Puszcza Niepołomice

The forest gave the club its name. Puszcza Niepołomicka, the old royal woodland east of Kraków, holds a herd of European bison, and the animal that stands as a Polish national symbol became the crest and the nickname: Żubry. The football side that took the forest's name was formed in the spring of 1923 and spent most of the century that followed well below the level where anyone outside Małopolska would notice.

That changed on 11 June 2023. Puszcza went into the I liga play-off final against Bruk-Bet Termalica Nieciecza and won 3:2, and with it came promotion to the Ekstraklasa for the first time in the club's history. The following season they finished 12th — not a survival scramble decided on the last afternoon, but a mid-table place in the top flight for a club that had never been there.

The cup run of 2024/25 went further than anything before it. Puszcza reached the semi-finals of the Polish Cup, the deepest they have gone in the competition.

All of which sits oddly against the ground. The Stadion Miejski in Niepołomice holds 2,000 — a figure that belongs to a town of that size rather than to a league where opponents fill stadiums twenty and thirty times larger. The yellow, white and green of the home end is a short walk from the woodland the club is named after, and the herd is still out there.