FC Eindhoven

The last time FC Eindhoven finished top of the country, professional football in the Netherlands did not yet exist in its modern form. That title, won in 1954 under the name E.V.V. Eindhoven, was the final champion crowned before the Eredivisie replaced the old amateur structure in 1956. Seventeen years before that, in 1937, the same team had already lifted the KNVB Cup.

FC Eindhoven has reached the promotion play-offs from the Eerste Divisie more than once without getting through them — runners-up in 2014/15, third-placed in 2011/12 and again in 2021/22, each time stopped short of the top flight. A play-off did go the club's way once, in 1975.

Matches are still played at the Jan Louwers Stadion, which holds 4,200 — a reminder that this is a club sized for the second tier it has occupied for most of the modern era. The shirts carry the blue-and-white vertical stripes that gave the team its nickname, Blauw-Witten.

The club now known as FC Eindhoven has not always gone by that name. It began life on 16 November 1909 as E.V.V., the Eindhovense Voetbal Vereniging, and carried the fuller name E.V.V. Eindhoven through the era of its two major honours. In 1997 the professional side split off from the amateur club into a separate foundation, SBV Eindhoven, before adopting the name FC Eindhoven in 2002 — the identity under which the team that started out as E.V.V. still takes the field.