Znamya Noginsk

Roman Pavlyuchenko arrived with a full career behind him, a World Cup pedigree and a stint at Tottenham Hotspur, and pulled on the shirt of a club most of Russia had stopped watching. Alexander Samedov came the same way.

The club they joined had gone by half a dozen names before either was born. Football in Noginsk traces back to 1911, to a team fielded by the Glukhovo textile mill, and the side that reached the semi-final of the first Soviet Cup in 1936 played as Krasnoye Znamya. It became Spartak, then Trud, then, from 1965, simply Znamya, the name it carried through most of the Soviet era. In 1991 it re-formed as Avtomobilist and won the Russian amateur championship two years later, beating Mashinostroitel 1-0 in the final to earn professional status — status it lost again in 2002. A move to Elektrogorsk in 2008 lasted one season before the club came home. It took the Znamya name back in 2010, dropped into professional football's second tier by 2020, failed to get licensed for 2024, and in June 2023 reclaimed the name it had carried into that first Soviet Cup run: Krasnoye Znamya.

At amateur level it has not struggled. Regional titles in 2024 and 2025 were followed by the Third League national final in Sochi, won outright in 2025. There is a local rival, Vityaz, also of Noginsk, and the fixture is known there as the Noginsk derby. Club president Oleg Pushenok has said there is no real hostility in it, no fan trouble, just a hard-fought game between neighbours.

Home matches are played at the Znamya stadium, which holds 2,500, under the club's red and gold, the colours of the town's own coat of arms.