KAA Gent In 1999, KAA Gent came close to bankruptcy — a crisis that makes the club's rise to Belgian champions barely sixteen years later, in 2015, one of the more remarkable turnaround stories in Belgian football. The club's roots go back to 1864, when a Ghent gymnastics association was founded; a football section followed in 1900, and the team quickly became known as De Buffalo's after a visit by Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to the city in the early 20th century, which is also why a Native American chief still features on the club crest.
For most of the 20th century Gent lived in the shadow of Belgium's traditional giants, its best moments limited to a runner-up finish in 1955 and Belgian Cup wins in 1964, 1984 and 2010, plus a UEFA Cup quarter-final in 1991–92. Everything changed on 21 May 2015, when Gent beat Standard Liège 2–0 to win the Belgian Pro League title for the first time in its history. The triumph earned direct entry into the UEFA Champions League group stage, where Gent beat both Valencia and Lyon to become only the second Belgian club ever to reach the knockout rounds, eventually losing a thrilling last-16 tie to Wolfsburg 3–2 on aggregate.
Since then, the club — playing in its traditional blue and white — has added a fourth Belgian Cup in 2022 and become a regular in European competition, sustaining its rivalry with Club Brugge, known as the "Battle of Flanders" as the biggest clubs of Belgium's two largest Flemish cities. In 2013 Gent left the Jules Ottenstadion, its home since 1920, for a modern new-build arena, the first of its kind in Belgium in nearly four decades, which remains the club's home today.
