Al-Ahli Club Sanaa

Al-Ahli of Sanaa were born in 1952 in the Yemeni capital and became the country’s most decorated club, known to their fans simply as the Emperor. Wearing green and white hoops with the eagle on the crest, they top the Yemeni league’s honours list with eleven titles and contest the Sanaa derby, known as the Summit, with neighbours Al-Wehda, the match that stopped the city at the Ali Muhesen Stadium. The civil war that erupted in 2014 suspended Yemeni football for years, but the Emperor returned the way the great ones do: champions in 2023/24, seventeen years after their previous title, in a country where finishing a league season is a victory in itself. Few clubs in the world carry so much with so little.