Standard Liege

Standard Liège have spent more than a century on the wrong side of that argument, depending on who is telling it.

The club came out of the Saint-Servatius college, put together by students who wanted somewhere to play. The registration paperwork got the year wrong, and 1898 has stood as the official founding date ever since, though the students did not gather until 1900.

Sclessin is the address that matters. The ground carries Maurice Dufrasne's name on the paperwork and the district's name in conversation, and both are used without anyone thinking about it. It holds 30 023 at its fullest, though matchdays are capped lower.

The red shirts came first and the nickname followed: Les Rouches, from the Walloon for red, which is what supporters in Liège have called the team for longer than most of the trophies have existed.

The best of those trophies came in a run at the turn of the 1970s — champions in 1969, again in 1970, again in 1971. Three seasons, three titles, and nothing in the club's record since has matched that stretch for consecutive weight. The pairing in 1982 and 1983 came closest, and by then the Belgian Super Cup existed to be won alongside it.

The last league titles arrived back to back in 2008 and 2009, four decades after the first sequence. Cups have come more regularly, most recently in 2018, and the count there now stands at 8.