FC Dynamo Moscow

Commemorative coin of Lev Yashin, the legendary goalkeeper of the team.

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 they 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 10-1. They defeated an Arsenal side reinforced with Stanley Matthews, Stan Mortensen and Joe Bacuzzi by a score of 4-3 in a match played in thick fog at White Hart Lane. They then drew 2–2 against Scottish side Rangers, meaning they completed the tour undefeated.[10]

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 them 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.

Yuri Zhirkov.

Mathieu Valbuena.

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,[11] which gave them a strong advantage going into the second leg. However, Celtic comfortably defeated Dynamo 0–2 in Moscow to progress,[12] 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 they lost their 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.[13] 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."[14] 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.[15][16] 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.[17]

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 (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 have most likely meant the loss of professional license and relegation to the fourth-level Russian Amateur Football League.[18]

On 29 December 2016, Dynamo Sports Society agreed to buy VTB Bank shares back for 1 ruble.[7] 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 were also to be financed under that deal.[19] 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".[20] 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.[2]

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.[21]

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 company that owns the stadium and has VTB bank as the majority owner).[8] The price was the same symbolic 1 ruble.[9] 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 (approximately €138 million). This reported larger number includes accumulated debts and the cost of the club's training centre.[22] 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.[23]

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 (UEFA Europa League) for the first time in 6 seasons.

However, at the end of September 2020, Novikov was dismissed after losing to Locomotive Tbilisi (UEFA qualification) and Khimki (RPL). Sandro Schwarz was appointed as the new coach on October 14.[24]

Soviet Top League / Russian Premier League[25]

• Champions (11): 1936 (spring), 1937, 1940, 1945, 1949, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1976
• Runners-up (11): 1936 (autumn), 1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1967, 1970, 1986, 1994

Soviet Cup / Russian Cup[26][27]

• Winners (7): 1937, 1953, 1966–67, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1994–95
• Runners-up (8): 1945, 1949, 1950, 1955, 1979, 1996–97, 1998–99, 2011–12

Soviet Super Cup / Russian Super Cup

• Winners: 1977
• Runners-up: 1984

Russian Football National League

• Winners: 2016–17

UEFA Cup Winners' Cup

• Runners-up: 1971–72

Ciutat de Barcelona Trophy

• Winners: 1976

Atlantic Cup

• Winners: 2015

Lev Yashin Cup

• Winners: 2010

As of 30 May 2019[28]

Rank	Country	Team	Points
90		Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC	16.000
91		Dynamo Moscow	16.000
92		Atalanta	13.500

As of 24 December 2020, according to the RFPL official website Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Pos. Nation Player 1 GK  RUS Anton Shunin 2 DF  URU Guillermo Varela (on loan from Copenhagen) 3 DF  RUS Zaurbek Pliyev 4 DF  RUS Sergei Parshivlyuk 5 DF  RUS Roman Neustädter 7 DF  RUS Dmitri Skopintsev 8 MF  CRO Nikola Moro 9 FW  CMR Clinton N'Jie 10 FW  NGA Sylvester Igboun 11 FW  RUS Nikolay Komlichenko 12 MF  RUS Danil Lipovoy 17 FW  RUS Anton Terekhov 18 DF  UKR Ivan Ordets 19 FW  RUS Daniil Lesovoy

No. Pos. Nation Player 20 FW  RUS Vyacheslav Grulyov 22 MF  RUS Igor Shkolik 23 MF  RUS Vladislav Karapuzov 24 DF  RUS Roman Yevgenyev 31 GK  RUS Igor Leshchuk 45 GK  RUS David Sangaré 47 MF  RUS Arsen Zakharyan 53 MF  POL Sebastian Szymański 70 FW  RUS Konstantin Tyukavin 74 MF  RUS Daniil Fomin 77 MF  BFA Charles Kaboré

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Pos. Nation Player — DF  RUS Ilya Kalachyov (at Tom Tomsk) — DF  RUS Ihor Kalinin (at Ural Yekaterinburg) — DF  RUS Grigori Morozov (at FC Ufa)

No. Pos. Nation Player — MF  POR Miguel Cardoso (at Belenenses SAD) — FW  GER Maximilian Philipp (at VfL Wolfsburg)

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

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

• 
  Boris Arkadyev
• 
  Mikhail Yakushin
• 
  Konstantin Beskov
• 
  Anatoliy Byshovets
• 
  Valery Gazzaev
• 
  Andrei Kobelev
• 
  Sergei Silkin
• 
  Dan Petrescu
• 
  Dmitri Khokhlov

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)," or general director.

Nikolai Tolstykh, 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.

Date	Position/name
President
1989–90	Vladimir Pilguy
President
1991–92	Valery Sysoyev
1993–97	Nikolai Tolstykh
General director
1998	Nikolai Tolstykh
President
1999	Nikolai Tolstykh
General director
2000–01	Nikolai Tolstykh
2002	Vladimir Ulyanov
2002–06	Yuri Zavarzin
2006–09	Dmitry Ivanov
President
2009–12	Yury Isayev
2012–13	Gennady Solovyov
2013–15	Boris Rotenberg
Club president
2015–16	Vasily Titov
2016	Vladimir Pronichev
General director
2016–18	Yevgeni Muravyov
2018–19	Sergei Fedorov
2019–	Yuri Belkin