Brusno Women

Zahra Moghani was eighteen when she signed for Pirane in 2021, arriving from Iran to a village club in central Slovakia and, by the account kept of such things, becoming the youngest woman ever to join a foreign volleyball club. She was one of several imports the team gathered that season — alongside players from Argentina, the United States, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine — under Bulgarian coach Kristian Michailov. The following season, 2021/22, Pirane finished fourth in the Slovak Extraliga, the best league placing in the club's history.

The name on the shirt is a borrowed one. The club was founded in 2009 as VK Brusno, and only later took the marketing name Pirane, after a waterfall near the town. Its Extraliga debut did not come until 2019/20, when it finished seventh, and it has since kept returning to the CEV Challenge Cup — 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2023/24 among the seasons played. Home matches are played not in Brusno itself but along the road in Slovenská Ľupča, in a school sports hall holding 200 people.

Alongside the foreign signings, the club has leaned on its own academy, producing the three Krajčírová sisters — Alica, Chiara and Viktória — who came through together rather than being bought in. The current head coach, Milan Bratić, took over after Michailov's run, inheriting a squad still built on that mix of imported experience and homegrown youth. No fixture has grown into a fixed rivalry for Pirane; the club's contests have been shaped more by which import arrived that year than by any one opponent standing across the net season after season.