Novyi Rozdil

When FC Novyi Rozdil needed a measure of itself, it found one this year, not on the county circuit where its name is usually made, but in the Ukrainian Cup, where a 2:1 win over FC Atlet Kyiv sent it through to the Round of 32 and, from there, to the Round of 16 — a stage the club had never reached before.

That result stands apart because so little else in the club's life has taken place beyond Lviv Oblast. Novyi Rozdil grew up as Khimik, and the red still worn today traces back to that identity rather than to any badge redesign. The rebrand to Novyi Rozdil, completed in the years around 2018–2022, changed the name on the shirt without touching what the club actually is: an amateur side built around a single town's football.

Its honours belong entirely to the regional game. Three Lviv Oblast Championship titles arrived in a tight run — 1965, 1968 and 1969 — before the club was pushed into second place the following year and third a decade later, in 1979. Nothing since has matched that run, which makes the cup form of the current campaign a rare departure rather than a continuation of anything.

The club plays at the Halychyna Stadium, with room for 4,000 should the occasion demand it. The occasion, more often, is a league fixture rather than a cup night.

Andriy Harapets is the name attached to this version of the club, the head coach who took a team with no recent history of note and pushed it past a Kyiv side into territory Novyi Rozdil had not occupied before.