It’s a brisk November night in Prague, cold enough to make any sane person retreat to the warm comforts of home. But football fans have never been known for their sanity.

Tonight, two Prague-based clubs – Sparta Praha and Bohemians 1905 – face off in the Gambrinus Liga, the highest level of professional football in the Czech Republic. It’s a derby – as football fans term matches between teams from the same city – and the more than 7,000 faithful who cram either end of Stadion Evžena Rošického help to underscore the game’s importance. The rest of the 19,032-capacity stadium is mostly empty, but it makes no difference, as the rabid supporters from both sides chant and sing with the tenacity of a crowd three times their size.

Sparta! Sparta! Sparta! The chant erupts from the sea of blue, red, and yellow at the north end of the stadium.

Zeleny! Bila! (Green! White!) comes the deafening response from the opposite stand.

The Czech football league might not be as glamorous or internationally respected as its English, Italian, or Spanish counterparts, but for the twenty-two men on the pitch, that doesn’t matter. On this night, they feel as beloved and adored as any footballer. And it is certainly of no consequence to those in the stands, waving homemade flags, their faces streaked in club colors. Prague’s true football fans, though small in numbers, are devoted and loyal. It’s not hard to see why, as the Czech capital is home to some of the most fascinating inter-club dynamics in all of professional football.

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This season, there are four clubs from Prague competing in the Gambrinus Liga  – AC Sparta Praha, SK Slavia Praha, FC Bohemians Praha, and Bohemians 1905 – exactly one quarter of the 16-team league.

“Having four teams from Prague in the first Czech league is still something I have to wrap my mind around,” said Andrew Kliment, a midfielder for Bohemians Praha. “Fans are spread out between the four teams and any games when they play each other are both tense and exciting.”

Sparta and Slavia – collectively referred to as the Prague “S” –are both top-flight mainstays and perennial favorites, with a heated rivalry that began over a century ago during their very first match in 1896. Since the first Czechloslovak league began in 1925, they have won a combined 47 domestic titles. As the two most successful and famous clubs in the Czech Republic, Slavia and Sparta divide not only the majority of the football fans in Prague, but most of the Czech Republic as well.

“People either support our club or hate it,” Daniel Hrstka, a life-long Sparta fan, said. “But at least its good that people feel something, even if its hatred. It makes our matches more interesting and everywhere we go people are curious on our performance.”

The polarizing nature of the two archrivals developed following the Second World War, as their fan bases became more and more directly related to class.

“Under Communism, it used to be that Sparta was supported by the Communists and the working-class, and Slavia more by the intellectuals,” Jan Vasenda, another Sparta fan, said.

That historical social distinction has helped make the biannual Sparta-Slavia derby one of the most consistently fierce fixtures in football.  “In the weeks leading up to the game, you can feel the tension rising in both camps,” Pavel Horvath, who played for both Sparta and Slavia, once said. Over the years that tension would often lead to entirely electric atmospheres on game day with supporters declaring their allegiance loud and clear.

These days, the team you support has more to do with family tradition than social status. Younger fans like Vasenda, 27, say that the rivalry between the Prague “S” is no longer as “savage among normal supporters” and is now more about “joking [about one another] in a funny way.”

Regardless, it seems that even today the derby sometimes has a way of bringing out the worst in fans.

An “S” derby at Strahov Stadium in March 2008 resulted in a total of 26 fans detained by police, as the match was overshadowed by a series of unruly disturbances by supporters from both sides. Confusion and disorder took hold as fans threw flares and ripped off seats onto the pitch, causing police to use petards to disperse the crowds.

While such incidents would appear to indicate that the rivalry and support for the clubs is as strong as ever, these derbies are merely isolated occurrences that seem to lack, in some form, the true enthusiasm and feeling of their predecessors. After all, though 16,205 fans were present for the mayhem in March 2008, an average of less than half that many attended the rest of Sparta and Slavia’s individual home games that season – all of which, assuredly, had much more tame atmospheres.

The fans themselves are the first to admit the support for their clubs isn’t what it could be. When asked to describe football fans in Prague, the immediate response of several supporters of both Sparta and Slavia was “lazy.”

“Most people prefer TV, they go to games only when the weather is okay and are very passive,” Hrstka said. “Sometimes it feels like a theater at the stadium.”

For the kind of genuine passion Prague’s biggest teams seem to lack, one need to head only to Ďolíček Stadium, the home of Bohemians 1905 – or Bohemka, as their supporters call them. The club, which spent much of its recent history in the Czech second league before gaining promotion to the Gambrinus Liga last season, attracts a diverse group of dedicated followers.

“Bohemians fans are loud and energetic,” said Milan Gagnon, an American who has followed the team since moving to Prague three years ago. “For them it’s not just a sport, and that’s what I appreciate. In a way, it’s sort of a cultural experience.”

Every game, thousands pack into the fenced off supporter’s stand at Ďolíček, where they are greeted by a friendly atmosphere, a crowd that takes pride in standing and singing the entire game, as well as the familiar scent of a certain hallucinogenic plant.

“What I love most is the family spirit at the club,” said Robert Polacek, a Bohemka supporter since 1978. “There is a close relationship between the fans and the club – the players and management – which is rare.”

One reason Bohemians 1905 is so open with its fans is simply because the club owes them a great deal. When the previous owners nearly drove the team to bankruptcy, over 1,700 Bohemka supporters rallied together and managed to raise enough funds to keep the club afloat. Their devoted efforts, however, did not prevent the owners from selling the team’s name, colors, and beloved kangaroo logo to a club previously called FC Střížkov Praha 9 – now known as FC Bohemians Praha.

The situation came to a head this season, with both teams now in the Gambrinus Liga. To outsiders, it can be a little confusing having two teams competing with nearly identical names and uniforms. For fans of either team, however, the difference could not be clearer.

“There is only one Bohemka,” Polacek insisted. As of late, it is not uncommon to hear the fans at Ďolíček loudly singing, “Střížkov zajebanej je, střížkov zajebanej je!” which roughly translates to “Střížkov is fucked, Střížkov is fucked!”

The players themselves, perhaps wisely, seem to be trying to stay out of the matter. “The controversy I know between the two Bohemians is that the name was bought by the team I am with and that 1905 have been using the name unofficially,” Kliment said. “Now I’ve heard other rumors but I don’t want to give you any false information.”

This May, the Czech Industrial Property Office determined the green and white stripes and kangaroo mascot rightfully belong to the 1905 club, but their Střížkov counterparts have refused to back down and the issue remains essentially unresolved. In the meantime, the situation has resulted in a bizarre and completely unprecedented rivalry: the two teams battle not only for points on the pitch but also for their very identity.

With their storied histories and intriguing conflicts, it’s a wonder that more of Prague’s football fans don’t pay closer attention to the four top-level clubs that are right in their own backyard.

Jan Vasenda, for one, is not surprised by their lack of interest. “A lot of my friends make fun of the quality of local football,” he said. “They’d much rather stay home and watch the English Premiership or German Bundesliga.”

Kliment has heard those claims before, but doesn’t buy them. “The level here is high and competitive when compared to the top leagues in Europe,” he said. “I see only small differences in level and skill.

“The problem as always is money. Teams like Real Madrid and Manchester United buy players for hundreds of millions of Euro and it’s just not possible for Czech teams to do that.”

In the end, to those who already support the city’s four distinctive clubs, it really doesn’t matter who else is watching.

“To those who care, it matters a lot,” Gagnon said. “And that’s enough.”