CD Badajoz (Spain)

Club Deportivo Badajoz come from the old frontier town of Badajoz, bang on the border with Portugal, smack in the middle of the Spanish interior department of Extremadura. They're not the only club from this city to play in black and white stripes, rather confusingly, as their upstart newcomer neighbours UD Badajoz also share the colours, just by way of confusing matters a little - but we'll talk about those elsewhere. All that you need to know right now is that CD are by far the most senior - both in age and status.

Founded in 1905, they currently play in regional group 2 of the Segunda Division B, which it the third level of Spanish football. They gained their place back in that division after winning the division below in 2010 - confusingly the same league that UD play in. They were created after the merger of two longer standing Badajoz clubs - Racing and Sport - but it took them until 1931 to become accepted in the main Spanish leagues. They've spent practically their whole career yo-yoing between the second and third tier - although their best second division run came during pretty much the whole of the 1990s. Alas, they've never quite been strong enough to make it to the top flight, their best result coming when they came sixth in three consecutive years between 1996 and 1998. Hopefully though this wasn't some biblical numerical sign of their impending doom.

They play at the 15,200 capacity Neuvo Vivero stadium - which translates as the new Nursery, and among their more notable ex-players they can name the Liberian international striker Prince Daye, the highly capped Guatemalan star Martín Machó, former Yeovil and Brighton defender Nathan Jones, and the short-term Spanish international striker Eloy. Although they were formed with the more English sounding name Sport Club Badajoz, in 1941, the Spanish Olympic Committee deemed it illegal to have any foreign words in the name of any Spanish sports club, so they promply changed it to the more local, and to be honest not all that different Club Deportivo.

All photos © lays with the owners
Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.