Belasica

A football club in Strumica has not always played under its own name. For part of its history it took the field as Belasica GC, the initials borrowed from a backer called Geras Cunev, whose sponsorship bought the side a second identity for a spell. No merger interrupted the line after that: the club has run continuously since 1922.

Light blue and white have stayed the colours throughout — light blue shirts with white shorts at home. The trophy case belongs mostly to an earlier country. Playing in what was then the Macedonian Republic within Yugoslavia, Belasica won the republican championship four times, in 1956, 1958, 1983 and 1988.

Since Macedonian independence the club has lived mostly a division or two below the top, doing its best work climbing back up. It topped the Third League's eastern zone three times in the 2010s and the Second League's eastern zone on three separate occasions, most recently in 2020, each time earning passage to the First League. Its closest brush with a modern title came right after promotion at the turn of the century, when Belasica finished runner-up in the First League in back-to-back seasons, 2001–02 and 2002–03, the high point of its time among Macedonia's top clubs.

The name draws confusion outside Macedonia often enough to need spelling out: this is not Belasitsa Petrich, the Bulgarian club across the border with its own ground and its own history — a mix-up that follows Belasica mainly because the two names, in two languages, sound like the same word.