Žilina II

Second place at the bottom of Slovakia's second tier is where Žilina II sat through 2024/25, one of thirteen sides in a division it has not left in more than twelve years — longer than any other reserve or first team currently in the league. Promotion was never the point: Slovak football keeps its B-teams out of the running for the top flight, so the club plays on without a title to chase, season after season, in the same stadium as the first team.

That ground is Štadión pod Dubňom, shared rather than borrowed, holding a little over ten thousand. The reserves wear the same blue and white as MŠK Žilina, and the shirt is the clearest link between the two sides — there is no separate identity to speak of, no B-team badge or rivalry of its own. What the second team has instead is a pipeline. Milan Škriniar came through the Žilina system before his move to Fenerbahçe; László Bénes left for Borussia Mönchengladbach in a transfer that set a club record fee. Neither stayed long enough to leave a mark on the reserve side's own history.

Peter Pekarík did. He is the name still attached to this level of the club — Slovakia's most-capped international, a product of the Žilina academy before Wolfsburg and Hertha Berlin took him west, and the player the B-team's own record-holders get measured against rather than the other way round.