Zaragoza

Every Zaragoza fixture against Osasuna carries the label "Derby del Ebro" — one Aragonese and one Navarrese. There is a sharper local grudge with Huesca, but Osasuna is the one that gets marked on the calendar in March, and 1987 still comes up whenever it does.

Zaragoza itself was stitched together on 18 March 1932, when Iberia SC and Real Zaragoza CD — a club nicknamed "tomate" — merged into one at a founding assembly. The new Zaragoza Fútbol Club played its first match a month later, 20 April, beating Valladolid 4-0 at El Torrero. Supporters still call the club Los Maños, after the Aragonese themselves, though "Blanquillos" and, for the 1960s vintage specifically, "Los Magníficos" have both stuck at different times.

That decade earned the second name. Marcelino scored 117 goals between 1959 and 1970 and remains the club's benchmark forward, while the side he led won the Fairs Cup in 1964 and the first of six Copa del Rey titles that same year, adding a second in 1966. The Cup returns kept coming in unlikely shapes: 1994 was settled on penalties after a goalless final, and 2004 needed extra time against Real Madrid. In between, on 10 May 1995, Zaragoza beat Arsenal 2-1 in Paris for the Cup Winners' Cup, Nayim's shot from inside his own half in the 119th minute the reason that final is still shown back. The club has never played in the European Cup or its successor — La Liga has never been won here.

La Romareda, opened on 8 September 1957, housed all of it until 2025; the club now plays at the temporary Ibercaja Estadio, 20,000 seats built over a car park in the old Expo district while the old ground is redone. It is a smaller stage than the one Marcelino, and later Piqué and Ander Herrera as academy products, grew up on — but it stands roughly where the first Zaragoza sides once had to make do at El Torrero.