Al Riffa

When Bahrain reorganised its top flight in 2002, West Riffa Sports Club absorbed the neighbouring Zallaq club and took the field under a new name, Al Riffa, adopted only the year before. The side traced its roots back to 1953, when Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa founded it as West Riffa Sports Club, and the merger closed one chapter of that history while opening another under the yellow and blue that the club has worn ever since.

What followed became the defining feature of Al Riffa: fourteen Bahraini Premier League titles, stretching from 1981–82 to 2021–22, a run matched by few clubs in the Gulf. The German coach Uli Maslo, who took charge twice, in 1985 and again in 1993, oversaw one of the earlier championships and helped set the pattern of success that later managers were judged against. Seven King's Cup wins followed the same rhythm, the most recent in 2021, alongside four Federation Cup titles and four Crown Prince Cups won in consecutive years between 2002 and 2005.

Beyond Bahrain, the club's best run came in 2010, when it reached the semi-finals of the AFC Cup, a rare continental highlight for a side whose honours are otherwise almost entirely domestic.

Two rivalries define the calendar. The meeting with Al Muharraq SC is regarded as the biggest fixture in Bahraini football, a contest that regularly decides where the league title goes. Closer to home, Al Riffa also faces East Riffa SC in the Riffa Derby, a fixture rooted in the shared identity of the city both clubs carry in their name.