Metalist Kharkiv

Metalist Kharkiv
	Metalist Kharkiv
	Template: Infobox Football Club / Maintenance / No picture
Basic data
Surname	FK Metalist Kharkiv
Seat	Kharkiv
founding	1925
resolution	2016
Website	metalist.ua
First soccer team
Venue	Metalist Stadium
Places	38,633
home	Away

The FK Metalist Charkiw ( Ukrainian ФК Металіст Харків , Russian ФК Металлист Харьков / FK Metallist Charkow , English FC Metalist Kharkiv ) was a Ukrainian football club from the city of Kharkiv in the east of the country .

history

Soviet Union

The club was founded in 1925 as a works team of a local railway company under the name HPS (ХПЗ - Харьковский паровозостроительный завод). In 1938 the team took part in the first cup competition of the Soviet Union before the team in 1946 under the name FK Traktor Charkow was accepted into the third highest Soviet league.

For the 1960 season, the team made it to the top division of the Soviet Union , where in the 1961 season sixth place could be occupied, before relegation to the second division followed two years later . It was not until 1981 that the club returned to the highest Soviet league. In 1983 Metalist Kharkiv lost the final of the Soviet Cup with 0-1 against Shakhtar Donetsk . In 1988 it was enough for the only big title so far, when Torpedo Moscow was defeated 2-0 in the final of the Soviet Cup . According to the all-time Soviet league table , Metalist ranks 5th among all Ukrainian teams that have ever played in the Soviet league, and 19th overall.

Ukraine

The 2010 team

In 1992 the association was one of the founding members of the Premjer-Liha der Herren, which was created after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent Ukrainian independence . After the 18th place in the table from the 1993/94 season, the team had to relegate to the second-rate Perscha Liha . The team needed four seasons to return to the Ukrainian elite class. After the 2002/03 season, there was another crash into the second division. Since the 2004/05 season the club has been playing in the Premjer-Liha again. In 2004, billionaire Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi took over Metalist Kharkiv, who consistently built up the team with generous donations of money. The new owner has invited a well-known Ukrainian football expert Myron Markevich as a coach. As a result, the team from Kharkiv became the third force in Ukrainian football behind Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar Donetsk , were able to take third place in the Ukrainian championship six times in a row from 2007 to 2012 and are also increasingly successful in UEFA competitions.

In the 2008/09 season , the club was represented in the UEFA Cup . After surprisingly winning the group in the group stage ahead of Galatasaray Istanbul , Olympiacos , Hertha BSC and Benfica Lisbon , the club failed in the second round to Dynamo Kiev . In the next season 2009/10 , the team from Kharkiv was eliminated in the play-off round against SK Sturm Graz , which the team was not represented in the European Cup. The club also played in the UEFA Europa League in the 2010/11 season , as the team in the round of 32, after qualifying for the Europa League through a triumph against Omonia Nicosia (first European Cup participation after the one-year absence) and in the group stage second behind PSV Eindhoven and ahead of Sampdoria Genoa and VSC Debrecen , Bayer 04 Leverkusen was defeated. The team from Kharkiv also played in the UEFA Europa League in the 2011/12 season and, after winning first place in the group stage ahead of AZ Alkmaar , FK Austria Wien and Malmö FF, as well as triumphs against FC Red Bull Salzburg and Olympiacos , qualified for the quarter-finals, which were lost to the Portuguese representative Sporting Lisbon - the greatest international success in the club's history.

In December 2012, club president Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi sold Metalist Kharkiv to the Ukrainian company GasUkraina . During his tenure, Yaroslavskyi invested a total of 440 million euros in the club and in preparing for the 2012 European Football Championship . GasUkraina's managing director Serhij Kurtschenko takes over from Oleksandr Yaroslavskyj as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Metalist.

In the 2012/13 season , the Kharkiv team celebrated the greatest success in the club's history by winning the first runner-up. Since Metalist prevailed against PAOK Thessaloniki in the third qualifying round of the 2013/14 UEFA Champions League , the team qualified for the play-off round and FC Schalke 04 were drawn as opponents. However, UEFA had already opened disciplinary proceedings against Metalist Kharkiv due to the involvement of former sports director Yevgeny Krasnikov in a manipulation scandal in 2008, and on August 14, 2013, the UEFA Appeal Chamber disqualified the club from all European Cup competitions of the 2013/14 season. Metalist's appeal against this decision at the International Court of Sports was dismissed.

In 2014, the owner of the Kurchenko Association fled to Russia because of the war in Ukraine . The club went bankrupt and was no longer able to pay its players. The club was therefore excluded from playing after the 2015/16 season .

Two successor clubs were founded in 2016: SK Metalist Kharkiv , which is owned by Kurchenko and currently plays in an amateur league, and FC Metalist 1925 Kharkiv , which has been promoted to the second-class Perscha Liha for the 2018/19 season .

Stadion

The club's home stadium was the Metalist Stadium , built in 1926 and last modernized for the European Football Championship in 2012 for 75 million euros , with a capacity of 38,633 spectators. In August 2013, the club acquired the stadium from Kharkiv Oblast for 64 million euros .