Safa

Safa go into another Lebanese Premier League campaign carrying the weight of three league titles won inside a five-year stretch. The domestic double of 2012–13, when the FA Cup joined the league trophy in the same season, remains a notable achievement.

The club did not start out as Safa Sporting Club at all. It grew out of an amateur gathering in the Wata El-Museitbeh district of Beirut in 1933, before seven founders, among them Maher Wahab and Hasib Al-Jerdi, formalised it on 31 March 1939. Government recognition as a private association followed only in December 1948, the same year the club moved into the ground it still calls home.

No player is spoken of at Safa the way Walid Dahrouj is. He stayed nearly twenty years, from 1984 to 2002, topped the league's scoring charts with 20 goals in 1991–92, and won caps for Lebanon while still on Safa's books. Omar el Kurdi came through the ranks, made 110 league appearances and collected two league titles before leaving for Nejmeh in 2020.

Continentally, the closest Safa came to a major prize was the 2008 AFC Cup final, lost as runners-up.