Alaniya Vladikavkaz

The Republican Stadium Spartak in Vladikavkaz has shrunk twice in the past decade for reasons that had nothing to do with results on the pitch. It opened in 1962 with room for roughly 18,000, grew to 25,000 after a 1970 rebuild, and swelled again to 32,464 in 1996, the year Alania stepped out for a debut in the Champions League. That version of the ground stood until 2020, when a full reconstruction began; the Russian Football Union certified the finished stadium on 25 July 2026, and it now holds 12,003.

The club has carried almost as many names as the stadium has held capacities. It started out in 1921 as Yunitas, passed through KIM and a spell named after Lenin, settled on Spartak for most of the Soviet era, and became Alania in 1996. In February 2014 the FNL removed the club over unpaid debts; the legal entity was liquidated within the year, and in 2015 the tax service filed for its bankruptcy. A new entity under the same name, Alania, was registered in 2019 and started again from the PFL, the fourth tier, though the Russian Football Union treats the line back to 1921 as unbroken.

Valeriy Gazzaev's side won the Russian championship in 1995 with 71 points, the club's only title in the Russian era; silver followed in 1992 and again in 1996, when a golden match went to Spartak Moscow, and a Russian Cup final was lost to CSKA in 2011. Zaur Khapov, Omari Tetradze and Mirjalol Kasymov played in that 1995 team. Nikolai Khudiev made more appearances for the club than anyone else, 417, but the scoring record still belongs to Nodar Papelishvili, who found the net 125 times.