Founded on 18 March 1900, Ajax Amsterdam are one of the three giants of Dutch football, together with PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord.

The club has been in the top flight ever since first gaining promotion to the Eredivisie in 1917. To date, they have won four European Cups/Champions League titles – including a ‘hat-trick’ of titles between 1971 and 1973, when the generation of Johan Cruyff, Rudi Krol and Johan Neeskens thrilled the world with ‘total football’.

On the domestic front they have won the Dutch championship 29 times, to go with 16 KNVB Cup titles. The club has also won one UEFA Cup (1992), three European Super Cups (1973, 1974, 1996), and two Club World Cup titles (1972, 1995).

The Ajax academy is famous throughout the world for produce homegrown talent. Among the many players to come through its ranks, are Marco van Basten, Dennis Bergkamp, Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf and of course the generation that includes the likes of Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart and John Heitinga.

Hamburger SV – or SV Hamburg as they are better known in English - are one of the oldest and most successful of Germany’s clubs, and boast the unique record of having played without interruption in the country’s top division since the end of World War One.

The club’s modern incarnation dates to 1919 when three of the city’s teams - Sports Club Germania; Hamburger FC and FC Falke – merged to form Hamburger Sport-Verein. However, it can trace its roots back to 1887, the year that Germania were formed, and can thus lay claim to being the oldest team in the country, which has led to them being fondly referred to as Bundesliga-Dino (‘The Dinosaur’). The team colours of red and white mirror those of the Hamburg’s coat of arms the City of Hamburg, while the blue and black of the club’s emblem are a tribute to the original colours of Germania.

Prior to the professionalisation of German football, SV Hamburg won the national league on four occasions (1922, 1923, 1928 and 1960).When Germany’s first professional football league, the Bundesliga, was formed in 1963, SV Hamburg became one of the 16 founder members, and have never since been relegated. On August 24, 2004, when the Bundesliga celebrated its 40th anniversary, Hamburg were invited to play the commemorative match against Bayern Munich.

The mid-1970s heralded the start of a golden era for the club, starting with a victory in the German Cup in 1976. They followed up the next year by lifting the Cup Winners Cup, defeating Anderlecht 2-0 in the final. In 1979, they won their maiden Bundesliga title, finishing runners-up the following year, and then finishing as champions once again in 1982.

However, the pinnacle of the club’s success came in 1983, when, inspired by Felix Magath, they not only retained the Bundesliga but won the European Cup with a 1-0 victory over Juventus.

In recent seasons, their best league finish was third place in 2005/06, which enabled them to compete in the Champions League for the first time since 2000/01, but they are yet to progress beyond the group stages. They have though twice won the Intertoto Cup, in 2005 and 2007, enabling them to qualify for the UEFA Cup.