Zimbru

The club that won them had already lived several lives. It began on 16 May 1947 as Dinamo Chișinău, then passed through Burevestnic, Moldova, Avantul and Nistru before settling, in 1991, on Zimbru — the Romanian word for the European bison. The yellow and green have not moved since 1947. The nickname followed the crest: the Yellow-Greens to some, Zimbrii, the bison, to others.

When the championships stopped, the cups did not. Zimbru took the Moldovan Cup in 1997 and 1998, then again in 2003 and 2004, in 2007, and once more in 2014 — that last one alongside the Moldovan Super Cup, the club's only one.

Home is the Stadionul Zimbru in the Botanica sector of Chișinău, a ground of 10,104 seats. It is small enough that a full house is an event and large enough to have hosted the country's football for years.

What lingers, for anyone who followed the club through the 1990s, is not a single name in the squad list but the bison itself — the animal on the badge that the supporters adopted as their own word for the team. Zimbrii is what they call themselves in the stands, and it has outlasted every one of the club's other names.