FK Jablonec

Jablonec go into this season still chasing what has eluded them since the club was formed: a Czech league title. Runners-up in 2009/10 remains as close as they have come, and this year's Czech Cup final ended the same way domestic cup football usually has for them — a seventh runner-up finish since 1998, against only two triumphs, in 1998 and 2013.

The club was founded on 5 June 1945 as ČSK Jablonec nad Nisou, in the Liberec region of northern Bohemia, and spent the decades that followed cycling through names — Sokol Preciosa, TJ Jiskra, TJ LIAZ, Baumit Jablonec among them — before settling in 2015 as the joint-stock FK Jablonec.

Home games are played at Stadion Střelnice, a compact ground licensed for 5,690 spectators even though its stands hold more. Green and white have carried through every rebrand; a "Galácticos" tag the press attached in 2014-15, when owner Miroslav Pelta went shopping for name players, never really stuck, and the team is still known simply as the Zelenobílí, the Green-Whites, or sometimes Jablko — apple.

Matches against Slovan Liberec, the Podještědské derby, take their name from the Ještěd ridge separating the two towns. In Europe, Jablonec have reached the group stage twice, in the 2018/19 Europa League and the 2021/22 Conference League, without bringing home a trophy.

David Lafata remains the club's record league scorer with 88 goals, but it is Tomáš Hübschman who defines its last decade: captain from 2014 until 2024, and still the holder of the appearance record, at 285 matches.