MSK Tesla Stropkov

Football arrived in Stropkov in 1920, one of the small-town clubs that took shape in eastern Slovakia in the years after the First World War. The name it carries now came later, in 1960, when a telephone-equipment factory called Tesla opened in the town and lent the club its identity along with, presumably, a good number of workers on its books.

MŠK Tesla Stropkov has never reached Slovakia's top flight, but it came close under Czechoslovakia, winning its regional third-tier group three times through the 1980s — 1983, 1985 and 1990 — each time earning promotion to the second level. The club matched that in 2024, taking the 3. Liga's eastern group, only to find promotion closed off: Stropkov plays as a feeder side for 1. FC Tatran Prešov, and the arrangement kept it where it was.

Its academy has done more for Slovak football than its first team's league position would suggest. Marek Špilár moved from Stropkov's youth ranks into a Slovakia international career and a spell at Club Brugge, and Jozef Kožlej, another product of the same academy, went on to finish as the Slovak Super Liga's top scorer.

Home games are watched from a ground holding around 2,500, in the blue and white the club has kept as its colours. What still stirs the town is the derby against Svidník, a fixture the club's own president has taken to calling "El Clásico" — a nickname earned less by the stakes of the third tier than by how much the two towns want to beat each other.