FC Volgar Astrakhan

Volgar FC
Full name	Volgar Football Club
Founded	1925; 96 years ago
Ground	Central Stadium,; Astrakhan
Capacity	21,500
Owner	Astrakhan Oblast
CEO	Andrei Sharokhin
Manager
League	FNL
2020–21	13th
Website	Club website
Home colours	Away colours

Volgar FC (Russian: Футбольный Клуб "Волгарь") is an association football club based in Astrakhan, Russia. They play in the Russian Football National League.

History[]

The club has been known under following names:

Pishchevik (food industry worker) (1925−1958)
Trud (labour) (1958–59)
Volgar (1960–94) (2012–)^[1]
Volgar-Gazprom (1995–2007), (2010–2012)
Volgar-Gazprom-2 (2007–10)

Pishchevik played in the Second Group of the Soviet League. Trud (and later Volgar) played in the Class B (1958, 1960–1967), in Class A, Group 2 (1968–1969), in Class A, Group 1 (1970), Soviet First League (1971), Soviet Second League (1972–1990), Soviet Second League B (1991). In 1992 Volgar entered the Russian Second League, played in the Third League in 1994 (finished top and were promoted), returned to the Second League in 1995 and stayed until 1998. In 1998 Volgar-Gazprom were promoted and in 1999 they started playing in the Russian First Division. With the exception of the relegation for the 2004 season, Volgar-Gazprom had been in the First Division until 2006. The club was denied the professional licence and thus relegated to amateur level in 2007. Another club was organized called FC Volgar-Gazprom-2. The new club advanced to the Russian First Division for the 2009 season.

After the 2017–18 season, the club experienced financial difficulties and decided to be voluntarily relegated to the third-tier PFL.^[2]

On 15 May 2020, the 2019–20 PFL season was abandoned due to COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. As Volgar was leading in their PFL zone at the time, they were promoted to the second-tier FNL for the 2020–21 season.^[3]

Current squad[]

As of 7 September 2021,^[4] according to the FNL website.

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
1	GK	RUS	Vladislav Yampolsky
2	DF	RUS	Maksim Tyulin
4	DF	RUS	Roman Loktionov
5	MF	BLR	Ilya Raschenya
6	DF	RUS	Nikita Pechyonkin
7	MF	RUS	Aleksei Pavlishin
9	FW	RUS	Ilya Stefanovich
10	FW	RUS	Artyom Pogosov
11	MF	RUS	Aleksandr Bolonin
13	FW	RUS	Aleksandr Butenko
17	FW	RUS	Dmitri Lesnikov
19	FW	RUS	Denis Timokhin
20	DF	RUS	Diyego Malaniya
21	FW	RUS	Aleksei Bayev


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
22	DF	RUS	Danila Vedernikov (on loan from Rostov)
23	MF	ARM	Artyom Simonyan
27	DF	RUS	Daniil Gorovykh
29	MF	RUS	Artur Karpov
30	GK	RUS	Dmitri Saganovich
43	FW	RUS	Vitali Zhironkin (on loan from CSKA Moscow)
44	MF	RUS	Artur Gilyazetdinov
55	MF	BLR	Nikita Kaplenko
56	MF	RUS	Viktor Demyanov
57	FW	RUS	Ilya Gomanyuk (on loan from Dynamo Moscow)
69	DF	RUS	Danila Kozlov (on loan from Torpedo Moscow)
77	DF	RUS	Yelisei Krivokhizhin
79	FW	RUS	Artyom Yusupov (on loan from Ural Yekaterinburg)
99	GK	RUS	Oleg Smirnov