Emirates Club

Three neighbourhood sides in Ras Al Khaimah, Al-Ittihad, Al-Ahli and Al-Shaab, gave up competing against one another in 1969 and combined into a single club, Oman Club. The name did not last: in 1982 the club became Al-Qadisiya, and two years later it absorbed Al-Tal'ea and Al-Nasr to emerge as Emirates Club. A further merger followed in 2011, with Ras Al Khaimah Club, carried out under the patronage of Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi. It brought a new crest, a falcon set against the seven stripes of the UAE flag, and gave the side the nickname it carries now, The Falcons. Most of what the club has won belongs to the lower tiers of Emirati football rather than the top flight: six UAE First Division League titles, spread from the late 1970s to 2020. The one run into the wider spotlight came in 2009–10, when Emirates Club took the UAE President's Cup and followed it with the Super Cup the same year. The squad has carried a couple of names bigger than its stadium. Moroccan international Mustapha Hadji spent a season there in the mid-2000s, and in August 2023 Andrés Iniesta signed for the club, turning out in a ground that holds under 5,000. Locally, the fixture that matters most is against Al Hamriyah, met more than once in promotion and relegation play-offs rather than in a fixture with a name of its own. The club that three merging sides built in 1969 has spent much of the time since being remade again, one merger at a time, before finally settling on the identity it carries today.