Full name | Football Club Zenit-2 Saint Petersburg |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The blues |
Founded | 2001, 2013 |
Dissolved | 2008 |
Ground | MSA Petrovskiy, Saint Petersburg |
Capacity | 2,809 |
Owner | Gazprombank |
Chairman | Maksim Mitrofanov |
Manager | Vladislav Radimov |
League | Russian Football National League |
2015–16 | 13th |
FC Zenit-2 Saint Petersburg (Russian: ФК «Зенит-2» Санкт-Петербург) is a Russian football team from Saint Petersburg. It plays in the Russian Football National League (second level). It is a farm club for the Russian Premier League team FC Zenit Saint Petersburg.
Zenit's reserve squad played professionally as Zenit-2 (Russian Second League in 1993, Russian Second Division from 1998 to 2000) and Zenit-d (Russian Third League from 1994 to 1997). Another team that was founded as Lokomotiv-Zenit-2 played as Zenit-2 in the Russian Second Division from 2001 to 2008. By 2008, there was no relation between that team and FC Zenit. Another farm club called FC Smena-Zenit debuted in the Russian Second Division in 2009, taking the spot of the former FC Zenit-2. FC Smena-Zenit was dissolved after the 2009 season because it did not fulfill Zenit's initial expectations. Zenit-2 reentered professional football in the 2013–14 season in the Russian Professional Football League.
In the 2014–15 season, Zenit-2 came in second in its PFL zone behind FC Spartak-2 Moscow. When FC Torpedo Armavir (which qualified for promotion from the Zone South) refused to be promoted to FNL for financial reasons, the league offered the second-placed teams in the PFL an FNL spot. Zenit-2 was the only one who applied and played in the second-tier competition for the first time in their history in 2015–16.