FC Dynamo Moscow

History

Dynamo Moscow has its roots in the club Morozovtsi Orekhovo-Zuevo Moskva founded as a factory team in 1887. The team was renamed OKS Moskva in 1906 and won a series of Moscow league championships from 1910 to 1914.

After the Russian Revolution, the club eventually found itself under the authority of the Interior Ministry and its head Felix Dzerzhinsky, chief of the Cheka, the Soviet Union's secret police. The club was renamed Dynamo Moscow in 1923 but was also referred to disparagingly as "garbage", a Russian criminal slang term for "police", by some of the supporters of other clubs.

Dynamo won the first two Soviet Championships in 1936 and 1937, a Soviet Cup in 1937, and another pair of national titles in 1940 and 1945. They were also the first Soviet club to tour the West when it played a series of friendlies in the United Kingdom in 1945. Complete unknowns to the British, the Soviet players first drew 3–3 against Chelsea and then defeated Cardiff City 1–10. They defeated an Arsenal side reinforced with Stanley Matthews, Stan Mortensen and Joe Bacuzzi by a score of 3–4 in a match played in thick fog at White Hart Lane. They drew 2–2 against Scottish side Rangers.

They continued to be a strong side at home after World War II, and enjoyed their greatest success through the 1950s. Dynamo captured another five championships between 1949 and 1959, as well as their second Soviet Cup in 1953. Honours were harder to come by after that time. The club continued to enjoy some success in the Soviet Cup, but has not won a national championship since 1976. Even so, Dynamo's 11 national titles make it the country's third-most decorated side behind Dynamo Kyiv (13 titles) and Spartak Moscow (12 titles).

Dynamo's greatest achievement in Europe was in the 1971–72 European Cup Winners' Cup, where they reached the Final at Camp Nou in Barcelona, losing 3–2 to Rangers. This was the first time a Russian side had reached a final in a European competition, a feat not repeated until CSKA Moscow won the UEFA Cup in 2005.

VTB Bank era (2009–2016)

At the end of the 2008 season, Dynamo finished third, qualifying for the 2009–10 Champions League preliminary round. On 29 July 2009, Dynamo recorded a 0–1 away win against Celtic at Celtic Park, which gave them a strong advantage going into the second leg. However, Celtic comfortably defeated Dynamo 0–2 in Moscow to progress, sending Dynamo into the Europa League play-off round where the club was eliminated by Bulgarian side CSKA Sofia after a 0–0 away draw in Sofia and a 1–2 home defeat in Moscow.

In 2012, after a poor start to the season in which it lost its first five league games, Dynamo replaced interim manager Dmitri Khokhlov with the Romanian Dan Petrescu, who managed to pull the club out of the relegation zone into a position in the upper-half of the league table. The team was close to qualifying for a place in European competition, but a failure to win in the last matchday left them in seventh, two points below the last Europa League qualifier position. Despite his efforts, Petrescu's contract was terminated on 8 April 2014 by mutual agreement after a heavy loss to league outsiders Anzhi Makhachkala 0–4. As Dynamo Director of Sports Guram Adzhoyev stated, "Last year Dan drew the team from the complicated situation, lifted it to the certain level, but recently we have seen no progress." Petrescu was replaced by Stanislav Cherchesov as manager. Under his management, Dynamo qualified for the group stage of the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League in which they won every game before falling to Napoli in the Round of 16. Dynamo was only able to finish in fourth place in the 2014–15 season after a string of poor results in the latter stages.

In June 2015, Dynamo was excluded from 2015–16 Europa League competition for violating Financial Fair Play break-even requirements. As a result, VTB Bank proposed to transfer 74 percent of the shares of the club to the Dynamo sports society. Under the proposed plan, the society would own 100 percent of shares of Dynamo as it did in 2009, while the shares of the VTB Arena would still be held by the Bank. The move would allow the club to comply with the requirements of Financial Fair Play, and VTB Bank would continue to provide support to Dynamo to the extent consistent with Financial Fair Play regulations.

Manager Stanislav Cherchesov was replaced by the returning Andrey Kobelev, and many foreign players, such as Mathieu Valbuena, Balázs Dzsudzsák and Kevin Kurányi, subsequently left Dynamo. Several young Dynamo prospects, such as Grigori Morozov, Aleksandr Tashayev and Anatoli Katrich, who won the Under-21 competition in the 2014–15 season, were introduced to the first-team squad.

On 22 December 2015, Chairman of Dynamo's board of directors Vasili Titov announced that the shares had not been transferred to the Dynamo society; that FFP compliance rather than the share transfer was the top priority for the club; and that he expected the club to achieve compliance by April 2016.

After the winter break of the 2015–16 season, the club results got much worse. Dynamo won only one game out of 12 played in 2016, Kobelev was fired with 3 games left, and on the final day of the season, Dynamo lost 0-3 to FC Zenit St. Petersburg at home, dropped to 15th place in the table and was relegated from the Premier League for the first time in history.

In October 2016, with Dynamo leading the second-tier Russian Football National League at the time, the newly appointed club president Yevgeni Muravyov claimed that club's debts stand at 13 billion rubles (approximately 188 million euros) and unless a new owner is found shortly or VTB re-commits to covering the club's debts, the club might declare bankruptcy. That would most likely mean the loss of professional license and relegation to the fourth-level Russian Amateur Football League.

Dynamo Society era (since 2016)

On 29 December 2016, Dynamo Sports Society agreed to buy VTB Bank shares back for 1 ruble. On 13 January 2017, VTB Bank announced they will sponsor Dynamo Sports Society to the amount of 10.64 billion rubles for the period from 2017 to 2019 (approximately 167 million euros as of that date). HC Dynamo Moscow and other teams of the society will also be financed under that deal. On 1 February 2017, former club president Boris Rotenberg said that the 75 million euro debt the football club owes to Rotenberg's companies has been restructured and "is not harming anybody".

Rivalries

Since its establishment in 1923, Dynamo's historical rival has been Spartak Moscow. Clashes between the clubs were seen by their fans and more generally as the most important games in the Soviet Union for more than three decades, attracting thousands of spectators. (Ironically, however, on New Year's Day in 1936, it was a combined Dynamo-Spartak team that traveled to Paris to face Racing Club de France, then one of Europe's top teams.) Dynamo clinched the first-ever Soviet League by beating Spartak 1–0 at Dynamo Stadium in front of 70,000 spectators. Spartak responded by winning the championship the following year. But after Dynamo's decline in the late 1970s, the rivalry has faded. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, first CSKA Moscow and then Zenit Saint Petersburg have emerged as the top clubs in Russian football, with the rivalries between Dynamo and its Moscow neighbours such as Spartak Moscow and Lokomotiv assuming less significance.

Stadium

Dynamo's ground used to be the historic Dynamo Stadium in Petrovsky Park, which seats 36,540. In 2008, it was closed for demolition. It is to be replaced by VTB Arena in 2017, which will have a capacity of 27,000 (adjustable up to 45,000). Until its completion, Dynamo has been sharing Arena Khimki with rivals CSKA Moscow since 2010, before the new ground for the latter, Arena CSKA, was completed in 2016.

Honours

UEFA ranking

Current squad

As of 24 February 2017, according to the FNL official website Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

FC Dynamo-2 Moscow

Following Dynamo's relegation from the Russian Football Premier League (which holds its own competition for the Under-21 teams of the Premier League clubs) at the end of the 2015–16 season, the reserve squad FC Dynamo-2 Moscow received professional license and was registered to play in the third-tier Russian Professional Football League, beginning with the 2016–17 season.

Notable players

For details of Dynamo Moscow players with a Wikipedia article, see List of FC Dynamo Moscow players.

Presidents

In the Dynamo organization, the position of "president" has not always been present; several times the head of the club was titled as "chief executive officer (CEO)."