Spartak Nalchik

Twice a season Nalchik turns its attention to Vladikavkaz. The fixture against Alania is known as the Caucasian derby, and it now carries more weight for Spartak than the club's older rivalry with neighbouring Dynamo Nalchik, a fixture that has cooled as both sides drifted through the lower divisions.

Spartak was founded on 3 November 1935 and spent its first decades as a purely regional force, winning the Kabardino-Balkar ASSR championship in 1938, 1949 and 1951, the last of those a double of league and cup. Recognition beyond the republic came with two RSFSR titles, in 1965 and 1970, the peak of the club's Soviet years.

Promotion to Russia's Premier League followed a second-place finish in the First Division in 2005. The club's single season of note at that level came in 2010, when it finished sixth, and it went as far as the Russian Cup quarter-final in 2007/08. None of that prepared anyone for January 2014, when Spartak was declared bankrupt, stripped of its professional licence and removed from the league altogether. It rebuilt from the amateur ranks and has since climbed back only as far as the Second League, where it now plays alongside its Cup ties.

Home matches are still played at the Republican Spartak Stadium in Nalchik, rebuilt in 2006 to hold 13,800, red and white seats under the Caucasus foothills for a club that has known both a Premier League table and life outside professional football within the same decade.