Al Shouleh

Handball, not football, is where Al-Shouleh has something to actually point to. The club took the Syrian Handball League and the Syrian Handball Cup in 1988 and again in 1993, and in 1991 finished third at the Arab Clubs Championship — a run that still sits at the top of the club's honours list, decades on and unmatched by anything the football side has managed.

The football team came together later, in the shadow of that success, formed on 13 February 1968 out of a merger of three Daraa sides: Al-Tali'a, Al-Wathba and Al-Rasheed. It has never won the Syrian Premier League and spent long stretches away from the top flight altogether — its return there in 2023-24 came only after Al-Shouleh beat Khattab 5-3 on aggregate in the play-offs, the club's first taste of the top division since the 1997-98 season. The stay was brief: this season the club sits 16th in the First Division, relegated back down. A single run in the AFC Cup, in 2018-19, remains the club's one continental appearance.