FC Dynamo Moscow


FC Dynamo Moscow is a Russian football club based in Moscow. Dynamo has returned to the Russian Premier League for the 2017–18 season after one season in the second-tier Russian Football National League.
Dynamo was the only club that had always played in the top tier of Soviet football and of Russian football from the end of the Soviet era until they were relegated in 2016. Despite this, it has never won the modern Russian Premier League title and won Russian Cup only once, in the season of 1994–95.
During the Soviet era, it was affiliated with the MVD and with the KGB and was a part of Dynamo sports society. Chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, was a patron of the club until his downfall.
From 10 April 2009 the VTB Bank has been the owner of Dynamo after acquiring a 74% share in the club. Boris Rotenberg Sr. was chairman until he resigned on 17 July 2015. On 29 December 2016, Dynamo Sports Society agreed to buy VTB Bank shares back for 1 ruble. On 14 February 2019, Dynamo Sports Society agreed to sell the club back to VTB for 1 ruble.
Dynamo's traditional colours are blue and white. Their crest consists of a blue letter "D," written in a traditional cursive style on a white background, with "Moscow" written below it, partially covering a football underneath. The club's motto is "Power in Motion," initially proposed by Maxim Gorky, the famous Russian author, who was once an active member of the Dynamo sports society.

History

Dynamo Moscow has its roots in the football Club Sokolniki Moscow.
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 and Spartak Moscow.
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, Dynamo won only one game out of 12 played in 2016 and Kobelev was fired with 3 games left in the season. 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 the club's 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 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 have most likely meant the loss of professional license and relegation to the fourth-level Russian Amateur Football League.

Dynamo Society era (2016 to 2019)

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. HC Dynamo Moscow and other teams of the society were also to 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". On 12 April 2017, with 7 games left to play in the 2016–17 season, Dynamo secured the return to the top level Russian Premier League for 2017–18. That is the FNL record for the earliest a team secured promotion.
On 14 March 2018, Yevgeni Muravyov was dismissed as the club president due to unauthorized payment made as a "bonus" to a third company during the transfer of Konstantin Rausch from 1. FC Köln.

Return to VTB (from 2019)

The new stadium for the club, VTB Arena was completed in late 2018. Following that, the stadium majority owner and football club's major sponsor VTB Bank expressed interest in reacquiring the control over the club. On 14 February 2019, Dynamo Sports Society agreed to sell back the club shares to "Dynamo Management Company". The price was the same symbolic 1 ruble. On 26 April 2019, it was reported that the deal is close to be finalized formally, but the price for the stock increased to 10 billion rubles. This reported larger number includes accumulated debts and the cost of the club's training centre. On 30 April 2019, VTB confirmed that the deal has been closed and formal price is 1 ruble, the debts outstanding from the football club to Dynamo society has been restructured to an 8-year term, and Yuri Belkin was appointed club's general director.
The 2019–20 season, their first back at the home stadium, started poorly and head coach Dmitri Khokhlov resigned after 12 games played with Dynamo in second-to-last position in the table. Under his replacement, Kirill Novikov, results improved and at the end of the season Dynamo finished 6th. That allowed Dynamo to qualify for European competition for the first time in 6 seasons.

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. 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 seated 36,540. In 2008, it was closed for demolition. From 2010 to 2016, Dynamo Moscow played their matches at the Arena Khimki, which they shared with their Moscow rivals, CSKA Moscow. They continued to play at Arena Khimki until the 26th of May, 2019, when FC Dynamo Moscow officially "returned home,"
as they played their first match at the newly opened VTB Arena.

Average attendance

Honours

Domestic

Soviet Top League / Russian Premier League
Soviet Cup / Russian Cup
Soviet Super Cup / Russian Super Cup
Russian Football National League
;UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
;Ciutat de Barcelona Trophy
;Atlantic Cup
;Lev Yashin Cup

European campaigns

SeasonRoundCompetitionCountryOpposing TeamScoreVenue
1972RUCup Winners' CupRangers2–3Camp Nou, Barcelona
1978SFCup Winners' CupAustria Wien3–3 on aggregate, 4–5Two-legged
1985SFCup Winners' CupRapid Wien2–4 on aggregateTwo-legged

UEFA ranking

RankCountryTeamPoints
90Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC16.000
91Dynamo Moscow16.000
92Atalanta13.500

Players

Current squad

As of 28 July 2020, according to the

Out on loan

FC Dynamo-2 Moscow

Following Dynamo's relegation from the Russian Premier League 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. Following main squad's promotion back to the RPL, it stopped playing professionally in the 2017–18 season, with players returning to the RPL U-21 tournament.

Notable players

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

Most appearances

Most goals

One-club men

Coaching and medical staff

Former head coaches

Gallery

Personnel

Club management

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," or general director.
, president of Russian Football Union in 2012–2015. Tolstykh played his entire professional career for Dynamo from 1974 to his retirement in 1983 after a serious injury. After retiring, he served as the team's president and general director on numerous occasions.