Lokomotiv Sofia

Railway workers in Sofia put the club together in September 1929, under a name that said exactly what it was: the Railwaymen's Sports Club. The trade stuck. Nearly a century later the nickname is still Railwaymen .

The first two titles came in wartime and just after — 1940, then 1945. The one that people still date the club by is 1978, the fourth and last championship.

The best European run followed almost immediately: the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup in 1979/80. There was a second act in 1992, when the club reached the Intertoto Cup final. Between those, in 1973, it won the Balkan Cup. The European Railways Cup, taken in 1961 and again in 1963, is older still.

The last trophy of any kind arrived in 1995, a fourth Bulgarian Cup. A new side, FC Lokomotiv 1929 Sofia , took up the name and the colours — black, red and white — but the Bulgarian Football Union does not recognise it as the legal owner of what the original won. The record above belongs, formally, to a club that no longer exists.

Home is Stadion Lokomotiv, rebuilt in stages in 2000, 2013 and 2021, and now listed at 16,000, of which 11,200 are seated.

The fixtures that matter are the local ones.