Progrès Niederkorn

The wait ran to 46 years. When Progrès Niederkorn lifted the Luxembourg Cup in 2024, the previous one on the shelf dated from 1977.

The club came out of Niederkorn, a mining settlement in the south-west of the country, and took the name Cercle Sportif Progrès Niederkorn when it was formed in 1919. The current name arrived in 1944, when football restarted in Luxembourg after the occupation.

Three league titles sit in the record: 1953, then the two that bracket the club's best years, 1978 and 1981.

Yellow and black are the colours, worn since the early years and carried by the supporters' group that calls itself the Black and Yellow Block. The wasp on the crest follows from the same two colours.

Home is the Stade Jos Haupert, a small ground on the edge of the village where most of the room is standing room and the main stand holds a few hundred seated. Nothing about it is grand; it is the kind of ground where a National Division match is played in front of a crowd that mostly walked there.

That is the frame for the rivalries. Niederkorn belongs to the canton of Esch, the old industrial south, and the clubs of that corner — the ones within a short drive of each other, competing for the same players and the same crowds — are the fixtures that carry weight. The National Division is a small league in a small country, and the derbies of the mining basin are the games where a season is judged.