Full name | Футбольный клуб Спартак Москва (Football Club Spartak-Moscow) |
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Nickname(s) |
Narodnaya komanda (The People's Team) Krasno-Belye (The Red-Whites) Myaso (Meat) |
Founded | 18 April 1922 |
Ground | Otkrytie Arena |
Capacity | 45,360 |
Owner | Leonid Fedun |
Chairman | Sergey Rodionov |
Manager | Massimo Carrera |
League | Russian Premier League |
2015–16 | 5th |
Website | Club home page |
FC Spartak Moscow (Russian: Футбольный клуб «Спартак» Москва [spɐrˈtak mɐˈskva]) is a Russian football club from Moscow. Having won 12 Soviet championships (second only to Dynamo Kyiv) and a record 9 Russian championships, they are the country's most successful club. They have also won a record 10 Soviet Cups and 3 Russian Cups. Spartak have also reached the semi-finals of all three European club competitions.
Historically, the club was a part of the Spartak sports society. Other teams in the society include ice hockey club HC Spartak Moscow. Currently, the club is not connected with Spartak sports society and is an independent privately owned organization.
In the early days of Soviet football, many government agencies such as the police, army and railroads created their own clubs. So many statesmen saw in the wins of their teams the superiority over the opponents patronizing other teams. Almost all the teams had such kind of patrons—Dinamo with the police, CSKA with the army and Spartak, created by a trade union public organization was considered to be "the people's team."
In 1922, the Moscow Sport Circle (Moscow sport club of Krasnopresnensky district) (МКС, Московский кружок спорта), later named Krasnaya Presnya, was formed by Ivan Artemyev and involved Nikolai Starostin, especially in its football team. The team grew, building a stadium, supporting itself from ticket sales and playing matches across the Russian SFSR. As part of a 1926 reorganization of football in the Soviet Union, Starostin arranged for the club to be sponsored by the food workers union and the club moved to the 13,000 seat Tomsky Stadium, known as Pishcheviki. The team changed sponsors repeatedly over the following years as it competed with Dinamo Moscow, whose 35,000 seat Dinamo Stadium lay close by.