Zenit Football Club traces its history back to May 1925, when a football team was established at the Leningrad Metal Works named after Stalin. In its early formative years, the team mainly played at local tournaments. In 1930, once a steady line-up was in place, the LMW team took part in the Leningrad city championship for the first time.
Shortly before playoffs started for the 1936 club championship, the LMW team was renamed “Stalinets”.
During the early USSR championships, Stalinets played in Group B (first league) and did not make it to Group A (premier league) until 1938. In 1939, Stalinets reached the National Cup finals, put up stiff resistance to Moscow’s Spartak, but lost. Spartak was invincible in those years.
A year later, in 1940, the team acquired the name we know it by: Zenit.
The wartime year 1944 saw Zenit’s first national triumph. The team won the USSR Cup for the first time, undermining the supremacy of Moscow teams.
The following three decades and a half brought no fame to the team. The highest achievements in those years were a 4th place in the 1958 National Championship, 5th in 1953 and 1976, and reaching the USSR Cup semi-finals in 1945, 1954, 1961, and 1977.
The revival of Zenit did not begin until the late 1970s.
In 1978, a new coach – energetic, skilful, and ambitious Yuriy Morozov – took over the team. His aggressive style combined with some young, dynamic new local players soon paid off. In 1980, Zenit won its first national bronze.
In 1983, Morozov was replaced by Pavel Sadyrin, but the team was now a strong, experienced cohort of accomplished masters. Zenit ended the 1983 season in 4th place, having treated its fans to a lot of exciting, memorable matches and made it to the national semi-finals.
In 1984, Zenit, then a perfectly manned, balanced team, made it to the national cup finals, but lost to Moscow’s Dynamo during added time. It must have been then that the team, having suffered a terrible blow, regrouped and finally made it to the national football Olympus. In 1984, for the first and only time in its history, Zenit became the USSR champion.
Next year, the Leningrad team won the USSR Super Cup and played in the national cup semi-finals. In 1986, the team ended up 4th in the national championship. From then on it was pretty much a downhill ride for Zenit for another ten years.
The latest Zenit revival began in the mid-1990s. With Sadyrin at the helm again, things started looking up for the team.
Sadyrin was temporarily replaced by Byshovets as the coach for two years. The first success came following a long interruption: in 1997, Zenit made it to the Russian Cup semi-finals. In 1999, Zenit won the Russian Cup under the leadership of Anatoliy Davydov, a young coach, ex-Zenit player who had just ended his playing carrier. The victory spelled the start of what was to become arguably the best time in the team’s history.
In 2001, Zenit won bronze in the Russian championship under the leadership of legendary coach Yuriy Morozov who had rejoined to the team. In May 2002, Zenit reached the Russian Cup finals, but lost to Moscow’s Central Sports Club of the Army (CSCA).
When Morozov retired, the management was hard put to replace him, but finally came up with a highly unorthodox solution by hiring Russia’s first foreign coach for Zenit. The experiment proved a success: the same year (2003), the team won the national silver and became the first and only Russian Premiere League Cup winner.
In the fall, 2004, after two qualification rounds FC Zenit qualified for the UEFA Cup group stage and was very close to the play-off . Although the team took only the fourth place in the Russia Championship, only 5 tours before the end of the tournament the team was among leaders.
Before the beginning of the Russia Championship 2005 campaign football experts placed FC Zenit in line with the leading Russian clubs and considered it to be one of the candidates for the champion’s title. In the Russia Cup the team advanced to the semi-finals again, has shown a series of 19 matches without defeat, but wasn’t lucky at the end of the Championship, having occupied the 6th place. However, for the first time in the club history FС Zenit got into the play-off stage and further in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup.
Before the start of 2006 campaign "Gazprom" became the main shareholder of FC Zenit joint-stock company. New administration promised to strengthen the team and, despite all misfortunes, rejoice the supporters with the new achievements in the domestic and international matches.
Lev Burchalkin played the most USSR Championships games (400) in Zenit history. He also scored the most goals: 78. Anatoliy Korotkov is famous for having scored as many as 22 goals in a single championship in 1950.
At different points in its history, Zenit has been coached by: Petr Filippov, Konstantin Egorov, Konstantin Lemeshev, Mikhail Butusov, Ivan Talanov, Georgiy Lasin, Vladimir Lemeshev, Nikolay Lukshinov, Arkadiy Alov, Georgiy Zharkov, Gennadiy Bondarenko, Evgeniy Eliseyev, Valentin Fedorov, Artem Falian, Evgeniy Gorianskiy, German Zonin, Yuriy Morozov, Pavel Sadyrin, Vladimir Golubev, Stanislav Zavidonov, Anatoliy Konkov, Viacheslav Bulavin, Viacheslav Melnikov, Anatoliy Byshovets, Anatoliy Davydov, Yuriy Morozov, Mikhail Birukov, Boris Rapoport and Vlastimil Petrjela. At present Zenit coach is Dick Advocaat.
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