Gamlakarleby Bollklubb
| GBK | |||
| Basic data | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Surname | Gamlakarleby Bollklubb | ||
| Seat | Kokkola (Karleby), Finland | ||
| founding | 1924 | ||
| president | Hans-Erik Sund | ||
| Website | gbk.fi | ||
| First soccer team | |||
| Venue | Centralplan , Karleby | ||
| Places | 3,000 | ||
| league | Kakkonen , Group C | ||
| 2017 | 2nd place | ||
|
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The Gamlakarleby Bollklubb , GBK for short , is a football club from the western Finnish city of Kokkola ( Swedish Karleby , formerly Gamlakarleby ). He currently plays in the Kakkonen , Finland's third highest division. The club plays its home games in the 3000-seat Centralplan in Kokkola.
history
GBK was founded in 1924, making it one of the oldest football clubs in Finland. It is considered to be the club of the Swedish-speaking residents of the bilingual city of Kokkola, while local rivals KPV ( Kokkolan Palloveikot ) are considered to be the club of the Finnish-speaking residents.
Until around 1950, GBK was also active in bandy and ice hockey in addition to soccer . In 1953 the ice hockey departments of GBK and KPV merged and founded the new club Kokkolan Hermes .
The GBK football team rose three times, in 1958, 1963 and 1975, to the top division of Finland, the Mestaruussarja . In 1959 and 1976 they were relegated again, from 1964 to 1966 the club played first class for three years and achieved its best ranking in the 1965 season with fourth place. In addition, GBK was active for a long time, most recently in 2007, in the second-highest division .
GBK today
Today the bilingual club concentrates its activities on football. The first team has been playing in the third class Kakkonen since 2008 . In addition, GBK is also active in the women's and junior sector and has around 30 teams with a total of around 600 registered players.
Kokkola Cup
GBK is also known as the host of the Kokkola Cup , which takes place annually in July , an international football tournament for youth teams. In recent years, over 300 teams have taken part in the four-day tournament, making the Kokkola Cup the second largest of its kind in Finland after the Helsinki Cup .
The Kokkola Cup was held for the first time in 1981 with around 50 teams. Since then, the number of participating teams has risen to 330. Overall, the number of participating teams between 1981 and 2009 was about 5000. Among the almost 100,000 participating players were numerous later professionals, including Craig Bellamy , Danny Mills , Simon Davies and Matthew Etherington .