Sparta Rotterdam

Football came second, tacked on in July of that founding summer almost as an afterthought, and only in 1892 did the cricket side fold and leave the game that survived to carry the name forward.

The red-and-white stripes came later than the club itself. In 1899 the board watched Sunderland play and liked the shirt enough to copy it, pairing it with black shorts and white socks. The ground did too: Sparta moved into Het Kasteel — the Castle, formally Sparta Stadion Het Kasteel — on 15 October 1916 and never left. It holds 11,026.

Six league titles came in the early decades, the last of them in 1959, and three KNVB Cups followed in the 1960s. In between, in 1982, Sparta became the first Dutch club to carry a shirt sponsor, putting the Efteling theme park's name across their chests. What the club is remembered for more recently is the opposite kind of milestone: a hundred years without dropping out of the top flight ended in 2002, when relegation broke a run that had defined the club for a century. Getting back cost the best part of two decades — Sparta only returned to the Eredivisie in 2019/20, winning their way up through the play-offs, and the job now is staying there.