Kastrioti Krujë

Kamëz sits just outside Tirana, and it was there, in 1926, that the club was founded, carrying the name of Skanderbeg's fortress town nearby — Kastrioti, after the medieval lord of Krujë.

The record shows a club that has spent its history one rung below the top. Kastrioti won the Kategoria e Parë, the second division, in the 1994–95 season, and the third-tier Kategoria e Dytë in 2003–04 — promotions rather than titles, the kind of honours that mark survival and climbing rather than dominance. The closest it came to the summit was a fifth-place finish in the Superliga in 2011–12, a campaign that remains the high point of what the club has managed at the top level.

Ownership changed hands in 2011, when Alban Sport took control with Petro Kumi installed as chairman, a move that came not long before that best-ever league finish. The team plays in red and black, and its matches against KF Iliria Fushë-Krujë carry the weight of local rivalry as the Derby i Krujës, fought out between neighbours rather than between giants of the Albanian game.

What Kastrioti has not done, in a hundred years since that 1926 founding, is win either the Superliga or the Albanian Cup — the two trophies that would have placed the club among the country's recognised powers rather than among those who have simply endured.