Zenit Saint Petersburg

The team that became Zenit started as a works side: in the spring of 1925 the physical-culture circle at the Leningrad Metal Works organised its football teams, and 25 May of that year is the date the club keeps as its own. Other origins have been proposed — a side called Murzinka from 1914, or the Bolshevik factory — but neither is recognised. The name changed twice in a decade: Stalinets from 1936, then Zenit from 1940.

For most of the Soviet period the club moved rather than settled. Its base sat at the KSI ground from 1934 to 1937, shifted to the Lenin Stadium in 1937, and then in 1941 went out to the GOMZ works — later LOMO — where it stayed until 1989. The municipal club was founded in 1990; a joint-stock company followed in 1993.

Nothing in the trophy cabinet predates 1999, when Zenit won the Russian Cup. The first league title came in 2007. What followed after 2019 has no precedent in the Russian championship: six consecutive titles through 2024, and eleven in all. The Super Cup record runs alongside it — ten wins, six of them in a row from 2019.

Home is the Gazprom Arena, which takes 63,145 for football and reverts to the name Saint Petersburg Stadium for international fixtures. The blue, white and sky blue of the shirt gave the club its nickname, the Blue-White-Sky Blues; supporters also use Lions.

The immediate question is whether the run that began in 2019 extends further. Zenit go into the season as the reigning champions of a league they have not surrendered since.