Volta Redonda

The Série C title in 2024 came 48 years into the club's existence. Before that, the closest thing to a national credential was the Série D crown in 2016.

Rio's giants are exactly what the city of Volta Redonda used to send out to represent it, only in miniature. Iznaldo dos Santos Gonçalves became the first president, and the black, yellow and white on the shirt came straight off the municipal flag. On the pitch it has mostly meant Copa Rio, won five times, most recently in 2022, and a Carioca runner-up finish in 2005 that ended in the cruellest way a two-legged final can end, 6-5 on aggregate to Fluminense.

Bruno Barra is the name attached to the shirt more than any other — 390 appearances stretched across 19 seasons. Home games are played at the Estádio Raulino de Oliveira, known locally as the Estádio da Cidadania.

None of it changes what the club was set up to do in 1976: give a steel town, until then borrowing someone else's team, one that carried its own name.