JFK Ventspils

When FK Ventspils collapsed in the summer of 2021, undone by unpaid debts and a UEFA disqualification, the club left something behind that no balance sheet accounted for: a full youth academy with nowhere left to play. Coaches and players from that academy did not wait for a rescue. Within weeks they registered a new club, Jauniešu futbola klubs "Ventspils", and carried on training on the same grounds under a new name.

The colours stayed yellow and blue, carried over from the old FK Ventspils kit as though nothing about the identity should vanish along with the company. The new club sits inside the structure of the Ventspils Football School, and its home matches are played at the Ventspils 2nd Primary School stadium, a ground built for 500 people rather than a purpose-built arena.

Progress came fast for a side assembled from a junior setup. In its first full season, 2021, JFK Ventspils finished second in the West zone of the 3. līga, enough for promotion. A year later it topped the West zone of the 2. līga and then won its second-stage group too, going up again — this time into the 1. Liga. By 2025 it had reached fourth place there, its best finish so far. Twice it has gone as far as the last sixteen of the Latvian Cup.

None of it has yet brought a senior trophy. What JFK Ventspils has instead is the academy it was built to save, still training on the same ground where the old club's youth teams once had nowhere left to go.