Football in the Soviet Union

The football in the Soviet Union for about seventy years was a very popular sport in the USSR, the USSR national football championships were one of the major annual sporting events.

Before the revolution in 1917 football was quite widespread in Tsarist Russian Empire in 1914 in the Russian Football Union included representatives from 33 cities, while the number of football teams was close to two hundred, and the number of registered players - the five thousand. Interest in football has not fallen, and after the revolution, the number of football teams continued to grow. And soon, along with urban and territorial competition, it was decided to hold the championships of the RSFSR and the USSR. Until 1936 they took part in teams of cities and states.

Tournaments in 1922 and 1923 officially called the Championships of the RSFSR, although they also took part in the team of the Ukrainian SSR and the Transcaucasian Republics. Both times took priority team from Moscow. Only in 1924 was held the first All-Union championship. In total there were five (1924, 1928, 1931, 1932 and 1935). In the first three tournaments, the team participated republics and cities, only two of the latter city.

Since 1936, the USSR championship for club teams and departments of companies Cup held annually, and sometimes several times a year (1936, 1976), and were interrupted only once, the Great Patriotic War. Tournaments were notable for their organizational instability, constantly changing the number of teams (7 to 26), some changes took place in the course of the championship tournament duration ranged from 57 to 282 days, they were then in a (1936, 1938, 1952, 1976), the in two circles, were single-and multi-stage tournaments (1960, 1961, 1962, 1969). Constantly varied scoring system, for example, for a draw in different years could get two points, points, and sometimes a single point. Changed the name of the tournament: Group A, Class A, I group, I group Class A, the top group Class A, the Top League.

In the second half of the 1980s leading players of the Soviet teams are beginning to move to foreign clubs. In 1990, the Dinamo Tbilisi and Žalgiris Vilnius left the competitions of the Soviet Union had similar intentions, and other clubs, but these plans were not implemented before the actual collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991 the victory of the FC CSKA Moscow, history of the championships of the Soviet Union in football ends. Reminder of the existence of the USSR Championship is the Commonwealth of Independent States Cup, which is traditionally attended by the winners of national championships - former Soviet republics.

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Wikipedia