Bate Borisov

Domestic dominance was only half the story. BATE became the first Belarusian club to reach the group stage of the UEFA Champions League, doing it five times between 2008 and 2016, and added three Europa League group-stage campaigns on top. Two nights stand out from those runs: a 3-1 win over Bayern Munich in 2012/13, and a 3-2 defeat of Roma in 2015/16, results that gave a club from a city of roughly 140,000 people a place in conversations usually reserved for much bigger names. At home, the fixture that matters most is against Dinamo Minsk, a rivalry billed as Belarus's own classico; Shakhtyor Soligorsk has supplied the other serious test of BATE's supremacy in recent years.

No player is more tied to that European run than Vitali Rodionov. He finished as the club's all-time leading scorer with 161 goals and also stands as its top scorer in European competition, a return built match by match through the years BATE kept turning up on continental nights it was not expected to survive.