Volgar FC

Full name	Volgar Football Club
Founded	1925; 96 years ago (1925)
Ground	Central Stadium, Astrakhan
Capacity	21,500
Owner	Astrakhan Oblast
CEO	Andrei Sharokhin
Manager	Vitali Panov
League	FNL
2020–21	13th
Website	Club website
Home colours Away colours

Volgar FC (Russian: Футбольный Клуб "Волгарь") is an association football club based in Astrakhan, Russia. They play in the Russian Football National League.

History

The club has been known under following names:

• Pishchevik (food industry worker) (1925−1958)
• Trud (labour) (1958–59)
• Volgar (1960–94) (2012–)^[1]
• Volgar-Gazprom (1995–2007), (2010–2012)
• Volgar-Gazprom-2 (2007–10)

Pishchevik played in the Second Group of the Soviet League. Trud (and later Volgar) played in the Class B (1958, 1960–1967), in Class A, Group 2 (1968–1969), in Class A, Group 1 (1970), Soviet First League (1971), Soviet Second League (1972–1990), Soviet Second League B (1991). In 1992 Volgar entered the Russian Second League, played in the Third League in 1994 (finished top and were promoted), returned to the Second League in 1995 and stayed until 1998. In 1998 Volgar-Gazprom were promoted and in 1999 they started playing in the Russian First Division. With the exception of the relegation for the 2004 season, Volgar-Gazprom had been in the First Division until 2006. The club was denied the professional licence and thus relegated to amateur level in 2007. Another club was organized called FC Volgar-Gazprom-2. The new club advanced to the Russian First Division for the 2009 season.

After the 2017–18 season, the club experienced financial difficulties and decided to be voluntarily relegated to the third-tier PFL.^[2]

On 15 May 2020, the 2019–20 PFL season was abandoned due to COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. As Volgar was leading in their PFL zone at the time, they were promoted to the second-tier FNL for the 2020–21 season.^[3]

Current squad

As of 7 September 2021,^[4] according to the FNL 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 Vladislav Yampolsky 2 DF  RUS Maksim Tyulin 4 DF  RUS Roman Loktionov 5 MF  BLR Ilya Raschenya 6 DF  RUS Nikita Pechyonkin 7 MF  RUS Aleksei Pavlishin 9 FW  RUS Ilya Stefanovich 10 FW  RUS Artyom Pogosov 11 MF  RUS Aleksandr Bolonin 13 FW  RUS Aleksandr Butenko 17 FW  RUS Dmitri Lesnikov 19 FW  RUS Denis Timokhin 20 DF  RUS Diyego Malaniya 21 FW  RUS Aleksei Bayev

No. Pos. Nation Player 22 DF  RUS Danila Vedernikov (on loan from Rostov) 23 MF  ARM Artyom Simonyan 27 DF  RUS Daniil Gorovykh 29 MF  RUS Artur Karpov 30 GK  RUS Dmitri Saganovich 43 FW  RUS Vitali Zhironkin (on loan from CSKA Moscow) 44 MF  RUS Artur Gilyazetdinov 55 MF  BLR Nikita Kaplenko 56 MF  RUS Viktor Demyanov 57 FW  RUS Ilya Gomanyuk (on loan from Dynamo Moscow) 69 DF  RUS Danila Kozlov (on loan from Torpedo Moscow) 77 DF  RUS Yelisei Krivokhizhin 79 FW  RUS Artyom Yusupov (on loan from Ural Yekaterinburg) 99 GK  RUS Oleg Smirnov

Out on loan

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

No. Pos. Nation Player — MF  RUS Nikita Muromsky (at Volga Ulyanovsk)

Notable past players

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