Rilindja 1974

No rival is on record for Rilindja 1974, and no nickname either — the club's identity is written smaller than that, in a valley rather than a fixture list. Baran sits in the Baran Valley, in the Pejë district, and the team carries the valley's name into whatever league table it finds itself on. For a stretch the club played under a different name altogether, KF Lugu i Baranit, before settling on the one it now uses.

The ground reflects the scale of the place: Baran Sports Field holds 500 people, a number that puts a ceiling on what a home match can ever look like here. Promotion has come the harder way, through the lower tiers rather than any early breakthrough — in the 2021/2022 season Rilindja 1974 finished second in the second-tier Liga e Dytë, behind Vjosa, and went up on the back of that finish. The club now plays in Group A of the Kosovan first tier.

Blue and white make up the colours, carried through on the badge, and little else about the club has been recorded beyond the shape of that rise from the valley league into the country's top flight. It began in 1974, in Baran, with a name tied to the ground it stood on.