Slovan Ljubljana

Slovan spent last season adrift in Slovenia's lower reaches, and the club's recent history reads as a long climb back from somewhere near the bottom rather than a defence of past glories. Sebastjan Cimirotič, once a Slovenia international himself, now sets the direction from the touchline at Kodeljevo.

The rebuilding is not new. Between 1945 and 1948 the club was reorganised three times over — Svoboda-vzhod became Borec, Borec merged into Enotnost, and Enotnost gave way to FK Maks Perc before the name Slovan finally settled in December 1948. A second dissolution followed decades later: in 1996 Slovan merged with neighbouring NK Slavija Vevče to play as Set Vevče, and when that side dropped out of the leagues in 1999, Slovan simply started over in the third division.

Its silverware belongs almost entirely to the Yugoslav era. The club won the Slovenian Republic League in 1964–65 and again in 1982–83, and took the Slovenian Republic Cup in 1981–82 — all before Slovenian independence in 1991. Since then, no top-flight title has followed; the closest Slovan has come is a 10th-place finish. What the years after independence did produce were players: Samir Handanović learned the goalkeeping trade here before more than a hundred caps for Slovenia and a career at Inter and Lazio, and Marko Elšnik went on to 112 international appearances and a spell at Crvena zvezda.

Kodeljevo itself holds 3,000, with 1,500 of those on seats, and the red-and-white colours have carried through every one of the club's reinventions.