Cheonan City FC

Cheonan, the city's name, reads as something close to "heavenly peace", and the club took its first colour straight from that reading. A municipal side founded in 2008 chose to carry both, and has worn them since.

It began life as Cheonan City Hall FC, a city-run team in South Chungcheong Province. Second place in the President's Cup arrived in 2009, barely a year and a half after the club existed at all; second in the Korea National League Championship in 2013, then again in 2017. Nothing at the top of those lists.

The clearest win came away from league football. At the National Sports Festival — the annual inter-provincial games rather than a club competition — Cheonan took gold in 2010 and again in 2016, having picked up bronze in 2009. For a club with no domestic title, those two golds remain the only first places on the record.

Then 2021, and a name change. Cheonan City FC finished runners-up in the K3 League and lost out again in the K3 League Championship, coming as close as the club has to promotion-grade silverware in the reorganised third tier.

Home is Cheonan Stadium, built in 2001, seven years before there was a club to fill it. That gap shows in the arithmetic: 26,000 seats for a side that has never played in the top flight.