Napredak

Napredak needed one result to leave the second tier behind for good, and on a spring afternoon in 1976 they got more than that. Against Rad, Jovica Škoro scored four and Milomir Jakovljević added three, seven goals between two men in a single match, and Kruševac had its team in the Yugoslav top flight for the first time.

The club that pulled off that result had been assembled thirty years earlier, in December 1946, when three local sides — Zakić, Badža and 14. Oktobar — merged into one under a name that simply means Progress. Its first goal, in 1947, belonged to Marko Valok, who went on to finish as the Yugoslav First League's top scorer while playing for Partizan.

Promotion in 1976 coincided with a new home. Stadion Mladost opened that year with room for 25,000; Red remains the club's own colour, a nod to the workers' movement that shaped the town, with white kept for away matches. Supporters call the team Čarapani — the stocking men.

The best league campaign came under Tomislav Kaloperović, who took Napredak to fourth place in the Yugoslav championship in 1979/80 and into the UEFA Cup. The top division itself was never won. What the trophy room holds instead is a string of second-tier titles spread across four different states — Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, and independent Serbia, the last two coming in 2012/13 and 2015/16 — and a run to the national cup final in 1999/2000, where Crvena zvezda beat them 4-0.

Mladost is not Napredak's alone. Trayal Kruševac plays there too, and the shared ground keeps the town's derby close at hand, a fixture with no love lost between the two sides sharing one pitch and one city.