FC Orenburg

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Orenburg

Full name	Football Club Orenburg
Founded	1976; 48 years ago (1976)
Ground	Gazovik Stadium
Capacity	10,046
Owner	Gazprom (through subsidiaries)
Chairman	Vasily Eremyakin[1]
Manager	Vladimir Slišković
League	Russian Premier League
2023–24	12th of 16
Website	http://fcorenburg.ru/main.html
Home colours Away colours
Current season

FC Orenburg (Russian: ФК «Оренбург») is a Russian professional football club based in Orenburg. Founded in 1976, it earned promotion to the Russian Premier League in 2022–23 season.

It played professionally as Gazovik from 1976 to 1982 and from 1989 on. Before 1976 another Orenburg team, Lokomotiv Orenburg, played professionally, including three seasons in the second-highest Soviet First League in 1960–62. In 1989 Gazovik was called Progress Orenburg. Gazovik began Russian League at Zone 5 of Second League and relegated from Zone 6 from one to Third League in 1993. They stayed in Zone 5 of Third League until 1997 season, when they returned to third level. They finished Ural Povolzhye (Volga Region in Russian) as runner-up in 2006, 2007 and 2008 seasons and finally promoted to the Russian First League in 2010.

On 2 May 2016, the club secured top-two finish in the 2015–16 Russian National Football League and with that, the promotion to the Russian Premier League for the 2016–17 season for the first time in club's history.^[2]

On 25 May 2016, the club was renamed from its historical name FC Gazovik Orenburg to FC Orenburg.^[3]

The club was relegated back to the second tier at the end of the 2016–17 season after losing a penalty shootout in the relegation playoffs to FC SKA-Khabarovsk. It was promoted back to the Russian Premier League after one season in the second tier.^[4] It was relegated at the end of the 2019–20 Russian Premier League season. They were forced to forfeit two games late in the season due to COVID-19 infections in the squad and play more games with a weakened line-up. On 8 May 2021, they secured a second-place finish in the FNL and return to the Russian Premier League after one season in the second tier.^[5] However, Russian Football Union rejected the club's application for a RPL license on 5 May 2021 due to the stadium not passing capacity requirements and other conditions, and their appeal was rejected on 12 May 2021. The club considered filing a complaint with the Court of Arbitration for Sport.^[6] On 24 May 2021, the club announced they will not file a lawsuit with CAS and will accept the RFU decision. They also announced that the club will begin the stadium reconstruction in June 2021 to bring it up to Premier League standards.^[7]

In the 2021–22 season, Orenburg led the FNL for most of the season, before dropping out of the direct promotion spot to the 3rd place on the last matchday. That qualified Orenburg for the promotion play-offs against FC Ufa, which finished 14th in the Premier League. Orenburg won the play-offs 4–3 on aggregate thanks to the second-leg added-time goal by Andrei Malykh and returned to the Russian Premier League after two seasons in the second tier.^[8] They finished their first season upon return in 7th place.

Domestic Competitions

• Russian National Football League
  • Champions (2): 2015–16, 2017–18

As of 1 August 2024, according to the official RPL 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 Bogdan Moskvichyov (on loan from Zenit St. Petersburg) 4 DF  RUS Danila Khotulyov 6 MF  IRN Mohammad Ghorbani 7 MF  TUR Emircan Gürlük 8 MF  BIH Ivan Bašić 9 FW  ARG Braian Mansilla 10 FW  IRN Saeid Saharkhizan 11 FW  RUS Stepan Oganesyan 12 DF  RUS Andrei Malykh 13 GK  RUS Aleksei Kenyaykin 14 MF  RUS Yaroslav Mikhaylov (on loan from Zenit St. Petersburg) 16 FW  CHI Jordhy Thompson 18 MF  RUS Aleksandr Kovalenko 19 FW  ECU Justin Cuero

No. Pos. Nation Player 20 MF  RUS Dmitri Rybchinsky 21 MF  ARG Gabriel Florentín 22 DF  ARG Matías Pérez 24 MF  ARG Tomás Muro 31 DF  RUS Georgi Zotov 35 DF  TUR Kazımcan Karataş (on loan from Galatasaray) 38 DF  RUS Artyom Kasimov 47 FW  BLR Timofey Martynov 80 FW  CRC Jimmy Marín 81 DF  RUS Maksim Sidorov 87 DF  RUS Danila Prokhin (on loan from Rostov) 96 MF  RUS Aleksey Baranovsky 99 GK  RUS Nikolai Sysuyev

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

No. Pos. Nation Player — GK  RUS Andrey Khodanovich (at Chayka until 30 June 2025) — MF  RUS Danil Kapustyansky (at Amkar Perm until 30 June 2025)

No. Pos. Nation Player — FW  RUS Ivan Gulko (at Kaluga until 30 June 2025) — FW  RUS Batraz Gurtsiyev (at Alania Vladikavkaz until 30 June 2025)

• Manager – Marcel Lička
• Assistant managers – Ilshat Aitkulov (senior), Konstantin Yemelyanov, Radik Yamlikhanov
• Goalkeeping coach – Platon Zakharchuk
• Conditioning coach – Yevgeni Stukalov

• Valeri Bogdanov (1997–1998)
• Aleksandr Korolyov (1999–2001)
• Adyam Kuzyayev (interim) (2003)
• Andrei Piatnitski (2003)
• Yevgeni Smertin (2004)
• Aleksandr Averyanov (2006–2009)
• Ilshat Aitkulov (interim) (2009)
• Konstantin Galkin (2009–2011)
• Robert Yevdokimov (2011–2017)
• Temur Ketsbaia (2017)
• Vladimir Fedotov (2017–2019)
• Konstantin Yemelyanov (2019–2020)
• Konstantin Paramonov (2020)
• Ilshat Aitkulov (interim) (2020)
• Marcel Lička (2020–2023)
• Jiří Jarošík (2023–present)

Had international caps for their respective countries. Players whose name is listed in bold represented their countries while playing for Orenburg.

Russia

Europe

Africa

Asia

CONCACAF

• Official website. Archived 14 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine.