NK Lokomotiva

The club that plays there grew out of the city's railway workers, founded on 1 May 1914 as ŽŠK Victoria, a sports society for staff of the railway. The name changed with the decades and the politics around it — Željezničar after the First World War, HŽŠK under the wartime Independent State of Croatia, Lokomotiva once the war had ended, briefly Crvena Lokomotiva in 1946, before settling by 1947 into the name it carries now.

For most of its life Lokomotiva sat well outside Croatia's top division, and its return there in 2009 came after a 52-year absence. What got it back was an arrangement struck with Dinamo Zagreb between 2006 and 2009, when Lokomotiva effectively operated as Dinamo's feeder club and climbed three divisions in successive seasons, from the fourth tier to the Prva HNL. Once there, it stayed competitive enough to reach the domestic league final twice, in 2012–13 and 2019–20, losing both times, and to go just as far in the Croatian Cup in the same two seasons without lifting the trophy either time.