Almere City

Almere City Football Club is a Dutch professional football club based in Almere, Flevoland. Founded in 2001, the club plays in the Eerste Divisie, the second tier of Dutch football, and hosts home matches at the Yanmar Stadion.

The club builds on former clubs from Amsterdam and is a result of ambitions of the Almere city council to play an active role in top sports. To that end, the sports club Omniworld was formed, which comprises a volleyball branch, a basketball branch and a football branch. Prior to the 2010–11 season, the club was renamed to Almere City FC.

History

Almere City can trace its history back to 1976, with the merger of DWS, Volewijckers and Blauw-Wit into FC Amsterdam. Disgruntled DWS supporters founded their own club, De Zwarte Schapen, named after their nickname, which translates as "Black Sheep". The club quickly rose through the ranks of Dutch amateur football, eventually reaching the Hoofdklasse. After several violent incidents on the pitch and a six-month suspension by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), the club moved from Amsterdam to nearby Almere and changed its name to Sporting Flevoland.

That name was changed to FC Omniworld in 2001 as a result of the efforts of a consortium (in which the city of Almere was a participant) to bring professional sports to Almere. These plans included a basketball club (BC Omniworld, now defunct), a volleyball club (VC Omniworld, now defunct) and the football club (FC Omniworld). However, when the Leefbaar Almere party became the largest party in the city council in 2002, the community withdrew from the project. This caused the club to fail the criteria for admission to the professional league in 2004.

Private investors were found, and the club managed to meet the first two criteria for admission (among which is a balanced budget) in late 2004 and early 2005. After FC Omniworld's stadium (the 3,000 seater Yanmar Stadion) and pitch were approved by the KNVB as well, the club met all criteria

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