Real Sociedad

The trophy that finally arrived in April 2020 sat in a locked cabinet for months. Real Sociedad beat Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey final, but the match itself had been delayed by the pandemic and was played a year late, in a near-empty stadium, against the one rival whose approval mattered most. Beating Athletic in a Basque derby for a cup is not the same as beating anyone else.

The club that did that traces back to 1909, when it was registered as Sociedad de Foot-Ball de San Sebastián. King Alfonso XIII granted it the "Real" the following year, the Second Republic stripped it away again in the 1930s in favour of Donostia Club de Futbol, and the post-war years put the royal name back for good. Basque speakers still call the team Txuri-urdinak, the white-and-blues, or simply La Real.

Its best spell on the pitch came in the early 1980s, when Luis Arconada kept goal and captained the side to back-to-back league titles, the only two in the club's history. He stayed for his whole career and never needed to look elsewhere to prove himself. Two decades later it was the academy doing the work: Xabi Alonso wore the armband at 21 in 2002/03, was named the best Spanish player in La Liga that season, and left to become a World Cup and European Championship winner with Spain. His father, Periko, had already gone through the same academy and worn the same colours in the title-winning years. Antoine Griezmann came through the same system before his career took him elsewhere entirely.

Mikel Oyarzabal has done what Arconada and Alonso didn't quite manage in one respect — stayed to become the club's own record scorer in the top flight, overtaking the mark Jesús María Satrústegui set in the 1980s, and lifting that 2020 cup as captain. Home games are played at Reale Arena, rebuilt and reopened in 2019, holding just over 39,000.

What still eludes the club is a third league title. The two from 1981 and 1982 remain isolated, separated now from the present by more than four decades without a repeat.