CSKA Moscow

Moscow's army sports society needed a football side, and in the years after the sports movement passed into the hands of first the Vsevobuch and then the Red Army's Central House, the team followed the institution rather than the other way round — new patrons, new letters on the shirt, the same red and blue underneath. What started life as the skiing enthusiasts' club in 1911 became OPPV, then TsDKA, then briefly KKA during the war, then TsDSA, then TsSK MO, settling on CSKA only in 1960.

Borís Arkádyev ran the team through the years when the name kept changing, from 1944 to 1952, and left with five Soviet championships and three cups — a haul built on the kind of possession football that was unusual for its time in the Soviet league. The rebuilding under Pável Sadýrin closed out the Soviet era itself, with the 1991 title arriving just before the league it had been won in ceased to exist. Valéry Gazzáyev is the one the modern trophy count belongs to: three Russian championships, four cups, and in 2005 the UEFA Cup, still the honour the club is best known for outside Russia.

Ígor Akínfeyev has been the constant across most of that: more than 720 appearances in goal, spanning the Gazzáyev years through to the present squad. Further back, Grigóry Fedótov's goal tallies from the late 1930s and 40s have stood long enough that his name was given to a scoring milestone still referenced in Russian football.

Matches against Spartak carry the weight of the fixture known simply as the Moscow derby, sharpened further by the overlapping city rivalries with Dinamo and Lokomotiv. Games are played at the VEB Arena, known as Arena CSKA until 2017, which holds just over 30,000.

The most recent addition to the trophy room came in the 2025 Russian Cup, backed up by that year's Super Cup — silverware that keeps CSKA in the conversation at the top of the domestic game even as the squad around Akínfeyev continues to turn over.