You’ve never heard of Belgium’s 12-time league champions? Maybe that’s because they went 90 long years between winning their 11th title and the 12th that they earned last season. They even spent 48 years outside the top flight until winning promotion in 2021.
It began with the club’s takeover by Tony Bloom, owner of English club Brighton & Hove Albion, in 2018. Bloom’s business partner, Alex Muzio, was a co-investor then and has been majority shareholder since 2023. The club’s rise has been spectacular: after that promotion in 2021, they finished second, third and second again before last season’s title triumph with coach Sébastian Pocognoli at the helm. Oh, and they also won the Belgian Cup in 2024 – for the first time in 110 years.
Their Stade Joseph Marien home lies in parkland in the south of Brussels and offers an old-school football experience. Three-quarters of the stadium is surrounded by huge, old leafy trees and only the main stand boasts a roof.
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise typically gets abbreviated to Union SG. The club have picked up a few monikers in their 128 years, though: RUSG, L’Union, Les Unionistes, Union 60, Les Apaches, La Vieille Dame.
Union reached the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi-final in 1960. More recently, they beat Liverpool in a Europa League group stage game in 2023/24, which pitted their defender Kevin Mac Allister against his better-known brother Alexis.
They didn’t exist 15 years ago! Founded in 2014, they won their first domestic honour, the Cypriot Cup, ten years later. They followed that up with the league title last season, when they also reached the last 16 of the Conference League on their European debut.
Juan Carlos Carcedo is best known as Unai Emery’s assistant, the pair having worked together at Valencia, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal. He moved into the top job with managerial spells at Ibiza and Real Zaragoza before joining Pafos in June 2023. He has been well backed by owner Roman Dubov, who took over in 2017 and has overseen big infrastructure and squad upgrades.
Former Gunners academy players Vlad Dragomir and home-town hero Kostas Pileas are mainstays, while David Goldar is the defensive sticking glue. The club also recently brought in a marquee signing in the distinctive shape of David Luiz, though the Brazilian has yet to feature for Pafos in Europe and, now aged 38, it remains to be seen what his role will be.
That’s Cypriot poet and revolutionary Evagoras Pallikarides, who was part of the movement that fought to end British colonial rule in the post-war period; he was executed aged 19 in 1956. A football club, Evagoras Paphos, was named in his honour and they were one of the regional sides that merged to form Pafos FC 11 years ago.
Indeed. That old cliché applies to Kairat Almaty like to no other team in Champions League history. As a club based in Almaty, the most populous city in Kazakhstan, they travelled a competition-record 6,900km for the round trip to Lisbon for their game against Sporting CP. Although Kazahkstan has been part of UEFA since 2002, much of the country is technically in Asia. Almaty is 350km from the border with China.
A pair of skis? In the 1980s the USSR ski team trained at the nearby Shymbulak resort. The mountains of Trans-Ili Alatau, which separate Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan, are just a short drive away.
Qualifiers aside, in 2021/22 they competed in the group stage of the inaugural Conference League. Going further back, they did represent the Soviet Union in the 1971 European Railways Cup.
They started as Lokomotiv Alma-Ata in 1954.
Their nickname is Team of the Nation. This dates back to the Soviet era when they were the most consistent Kazakh representatives in the USSR’s top flight.
Rafael Urazbakhtin’s side won four qualifying rounds to reach the league phase, beating Olimpija, KuPS, Slovan Bratislava and Celtic. They kept four clean sheets at home and won the last two ties on penalties. Reserve keeper Temirlan Anarbekov was the hero against Celtic, saving two penalties in the shoot-out after a pair of goalless draws.
Yes, Bodø is the coastal town where the club are based. Glimt is the Norwegian for ‘gleam’.
It’s on the west coast of Norway, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a challenging 15-hour drive from Oslo.
It certainly is. They’re the northernmost club to have played in the competition in the Champions League era, but they’re used to making history. Under coach Kjetil Knudsen, they have won four of the last five Norwegian titles.
Last season Bodø/Glimt became the first Norwegian club to contest a European semi-final, in the Europa League. They won nine of their 11 home ties to get there.
It helps that, with just one exception, Knutsen’s squad are all Scandinavian-born and know the terrain perfectly. The embodiment of this is midfielder Patrick Berg, whose grandfather Harald and father Orjan also played for Bodø (along with two uncles).
The giant yellow toothbrushes that supporters take to games – a tradition dating back to the 1970s. You also stand a good chance of spotting the Northern Lights in Bodø – where else does the competition offer you that?
You’ve never heard of Belgium’s 12-time league champions? Maybe that’s because they went 90 long years between winning their 11th title and the 12th that they earned last season. They even spent 48 years outside the top flight until winning promotion in 2021.
It began with the club’s takeover by Tony Bloom, owner of English club Brighton & Hove Albion, in 2018. Bloom’s business partner, Alex Muzio, was a co-investor then and has been majority shareholder since 2023. The club’s rise has been spectacular: after that promotion in 2021, they finished second, third and second again before last season’s title triumph with coach Sébastian Pocognoli at the helm. Oh, and they also won the Belgian Cup in 2024 – for the first time in 110 years.
Their Stade Joseph Marien home lies in parkland in the south of Brussels and offers an old-school football experience. Three-quarters of the stadium is surrounded by huge, old leafy trees and only the main stand boasts a roof.
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise typically gets abbreviated to Union SG. The club have picked up a few monikers in their 128 years, though: RUSG, L’Union, Les Unionistes, Union 60, Les Apaches, La Vieille Dame.
Union reached the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi-final in 1960. More recently, they beat Liverpool in a Europa League group stage game in 2023/24, which pitted their defender Kevin Mac Allister against his better-known brother Alexis.
They didn’t exist 15 years ago! Founded in 2014, they won their first domestic honour, the Cypriot Cup, ten years later. They followed that up with the league title last season, when they also reached the last 16 of the Conference League on their European debut.
Juan Carlos Carcedo is best known as Unai Emery’s assistant, the pair having worked together at Valencia, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal. He moved into the top job with managerial spells at Ibiza and Real Zaragoza before joining Pafos in June 2023. He has been well backed by owner Roman Dubov, who took over in 2017 and has overseen big infrastructure and squad upgrades.
Former Gunners academy players Vlad Dragomir and home-town hero Kostas Pileas are mainstays, while David Goldar is the defensive sticking glue. The club also recently brought in a marquee signing in the distinctive shape of David Luiz, though the Brazilian has yet to feature for Pafos in Europe and, now aged 38, it remains to be seen what his role will be.
That’s Cypriot poet and revolutionary Evagoras Pallikarides, who was part of the movement that fought to end British colonial rule in the post-war period; he was executed aged 19 in 1956. A football club, Evagoras Paphos, was named in his honour and they were one of the regional sides that merged to form Pafos FC 11 years ago.
Indeed. That old cliché applies to Kairat Almaty like to no other team in Champions League history. As a club based in Almaty, the most populous city in Kazakhstan, they travelled a competition-record 6,900km for the round trip to Lisbon for their game against Sporting CP. Although Kazahkstan has been part of UEFA since 2002, much of the country is technically in Asia. Almaty is 350km from the border with China.
A pair of skis? In the 1980s the USSR ski team trained at the nearby Shymbulak resort. The mountains of Trans-Ili Alatau, which separate Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan, are just a short drive away.
Qualifiers aside, in 2021/22 they competed in the group stage of the inaugural Conference League. Going further back, they did represent the Soviet Union in the 1971 European Railways Cup.
They started as Lokomotiv Alma-Ata in 1954.
Their nickname is Team of the Nation. This dates back to the Soviet era when they were the most consistent Kazakh representatives in the USSR’s top flight.
Rafael Urazbakhtin’s side won four qualifying rounds to reach the league phase, beating Olimpija, KuPS, Slovan Bratislava and Celtic. They kept four clean sheets at home and won the last two ties on penalties. Reserve keeper Temirlan Anarbekov was the hero against Celtic, saving two penalties in the shoot-out after a pair of goalless draws.
Yes, Bodø is the coastal town where the club are based. Glimt is the Norwegian for ‘gleam’.
It’s on the west coast of Norway, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a challenging 15-hour drive from Oslo.
It certainly is. They’re the northernmost club to have played in the competition in the Champions League era, but they’re used to making history. Under coach Kjetil Knudsen, they have won four of the last five Norwegian titles.
Last season Bodø/Glimt became the first Norwegian club to contest a European semi-final, in the Europa League. They won nine of their 11 home ties to get there.
It helps that, with just one exception, Knutsen’s squad are all Scandinavian-born and know the terrain perfectly. The embodiment of this is midfielder Patrick Berg, whose grandfather Harald and father Orjan also played for Bodø (along with two uncles).
The giant yellow toothbrushes that supporters take to games – a tradition dating back to the 1970s. You also stand a good chance of spotting the Northern Lights in Bodø – where else does the competition offer you that?
You’ve never heard of Belgium’s 12-time league champions? Maybe that’s because they went 90 long years between winning their 11th title and the 12th that they earned last season. They even spent 48 years outside the top flight until winning promotion in 2021.
It began with the club’s takeover by Tony Bloom, owner of English club Brighton & Hove Albion, in 2018. Bloom’s business partner, Alex Muzio, was a co-investor then and has been majority shareholder since 2023. The club’s rise has been spectacular: after that promotion in 2021, they finished second, third and second again before last season’s title triumph with coach Sébastian Pocognoli at the helm. Oh, and they also won the Belgian Cup in 2024 – for the first time in 110 years.
Their Stade Joseph Marien home lies in parkland in the south of Brussels and offers an old-school football experience. Three-quarters of the stadium is surrounded by huge, old leafy trees and only the main stand boasts a roof.
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise typically gets abbreviated to Union SG. The club have picked up a few monikers in their 128 years, though: RUSG, L’Union, Les Unionistes, Union 60, Les Apaches, La Vieille Dame.
Union reached the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi-final in 1960. More recently, they beat Liverpool in a Europa League group stage game in 2023/24, which pitted their defender Kevin Mac Allister against his better-known brother Alexis.
They didn’t exist 15 years ago! Founded in 2014, they won their first domestic honour, the Cypriot Cup, ten years later. They followed that up with the league title last season, when they also reached the last 16 of the Conference League on their European debut.
Juan Carlos Carcedo is best known as Unai Emery’s assistant, the pair having worked together at Valencia, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal. He moved into the top job with managerial spells at Ibiza and Real Zaragoza before joining Pafos in June 2023. He has been well backed by owner Roman Dubov, who took over in 2017 and has overseen big infrastructure and squad upgrades.
Former Gunners academy players Vlad Dragomir and home-town hero Kostas Pileas are mainstays, while David Goldar is the defensive sticking glue. The club also recently brought in a marquee signing in the distinctive shape of David Luiz, though the Brazilian has yet to feature for Pafos in Europe and, now aged 38, it remains to be seen what his role will be.
That’s Cypriot poet and revolutionary Evagoras Pallikarides, who was part of the movement that fought to end British colonial rule in the post-war period; he was executed aged 19 in 1956. A football club, Evagoras Paphos, was named in his honour and they were one of the regional sides that merged to form Pafos FC 11 years ago.
Indeed. That old cliché applies to Kairat Almaty like to no other team in Champions League history. As a club based in Almaty, the most populous city in Kazakhstan, they travelled a competition-record 6,900km for the round trip to Lisbon for their game against Sporting CP. Although Kazahkstan has been part of UEFA since 2002, much of the country is technically in Asia. Almaty is 350km from the border with China.
A pair of skis? In the 1980s the USSR ski team trained at the nearby Shymbulak resort. The mountains of Trans-Ili Alatau, which separate Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan, are just a short drive away.
Qualifiers aside, in 2021/22 they competed in the group stage of the inaugural Conference League. Going further back, they did represent the Soviet Union in the 1971 European Railways Cup.
They started as Lokomotiv Alma-Ata in 1954.
Their nickname is Team of the Nation. This dates back to the Soviet era when they were the most consistent Kazakh representatives in the USSR’s top flight.
Rafael Urazbakhtin’s side won four qualifying rounds to reach the league phase, beating Olimpija, KuPS, Slovan Bratislava and Celtic. They kept four clean sheets at home and won the last two ties on penalties. Reserve keeper Temirlan Anarbekov was the hero against Celtic, saving two penalties in the shoot-out after a pair of goalless draws.
Yes, Bodø is the coastal town where the club are based. Glimt is the Norwegian for ‘gleam’.
It’s on the west coast of Norway, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a challenging 15-hour drive from Oslo.
It certainly is. They’re the northernmost club to have played in the competition in the Champions League era, but they’re used to making history. Under coach Kjetil Knudsen, they have won four of the last five Norwegian titles.
Last season Bodø/Glimt became the first Norwegian club to contest a European semi-final, in the Europa League. They won nine of their 11 home ties to get there.
It helps that, with just one exception, Knutsen’s squad are all Scandinavian-born and know the terrain perfectly. The embodiment of this is midfielder Patrick Berg, whose grandfather Harald and father Orjan also played for Bodø (along with two uncles).
The giant yellow toothbrushes that supporters take to games – a tradition dating back to the 1970s. You also stand a good chance of spotting the Northern Lights in Bodø – where else does the competition offer you that?
