FC Utrecht

Football Club Utrecht (Dutch pronunciation: [ɛfˈseː ˈytrɛxt]) is a Dutch professional football club based in Utrecht. The club competes in the Eredivisie, the top tier of Dutch football, and plays its home matches at the Stadion Galgenwaard.

The club was formed in 1970 as a merger between local clubs VV DOS, USV Elinkwijk and Velox. Since then, the club has won three national cup tournaments: in 1985, 2003 and 2004, also winning the Johan Cruyff Shield in 2004 as the first club outside the traditional Dutch Big Three. Utrecht is also the only club outside the Big Three which has never suffered relegation from the top-flight Eredivisie.

Utrecht have competed in 15 European campaigns, reaching the group stages of the 2004–05 UEFA Cup and the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League, their best European results.

History

1970–1979: Merger and early years

In the late 1960s, the municipality of Utrecht initiated talks of a merger between the professional departments of VV DOS, Velox and USV Elinkwijk with the aim of continuing to guarantee professional football at top level in the city. DOS was the largest of the three clubs, and had won a national championship in 1958. With stout defensive tactics, the club had narrowly escaped relegation for three successive years, and mismanagement had left the club on the brink of bankruptcy. A cynical comment from that time was: "The club can do nothing, not even relegate."

Merger plans were experienced less positively at Velox and Elinkwijk. Velox had been promoted to the Eerste Divisie in the early 1960s and had been close to achieving promotion to the Eredivisie a few times. In 1968, however, the team relegated to the third-tier Tweede Divisie again. Elinkwijk had been more successful than Velox. A yo-yo club, Elinkwijk alternated seasons in the bottom of the Eredivisie with seasons in the top of the Eerste Divisie. In addition, there was a sentiment in Elinkwijk that it was not originally an U

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