Zvezda Perm Women

Elena Suslova wore the captain's armband at Zvezda for years, and later took charge of the same side from the bench. Few careers in Russian women's football run that way — the same club, the same ground, two roles a decade apart.

The club she led began with a training session on 15 June 2005. The name carries two things at once: the year it was formed, and the men's Zvezda Perm, founded in 1932 and wound up in 1997. Perm had lost a football name and got it back through a women's team.

They won the national championship in their first season, in 2005, and again the year after. Four more titles followed, the last of them in 2017. The cups came in a different rhythm — first in 2007, then a cluster in the 2010s, then 2019.

The season that put them in front of a wider audience was 2008–09, when they reached the final of the UEFA Women's Cup. Duisburg beat them 7–1 over the two legs.

Home is Zvezda Stadium, 17,000 seats, burgundy and white on the pitch. The supporters call the team the Zvezdochki — the Little Stars.

Perm has a derby, but it belongs to the men: Amkar against Zvezda. What it has instead are opponents earned in the table — Spartak Moscow and Chertanovo, the sides that turned up when the championship was being decided and were still there when Zvezda's run of titles ended.