FCI Levadia

FCI Levadia Tallinn, commonly known as FCI Levadia, or simply as Levadia, is a professional football club based in Tallinn, Estonia, that competes in the Meistriliiga, the top flight of Estonian football. The club's home ground is Lillekula Stadium.

Founded as Levadia in Maardu in 1998, the club moved to Tallinn in 2004. The club has played in the Meistriliiga since the 1999 season and have never been relegated from the Estonian top division. Levadia have won 9 Meistriliiga titles, a record 9 Estonian Cups and 7 Estonian Supercups. In 2017, Levadia's first team merged with FCI Tallinn, and became FCI Levadia.

History

Early history

Levadia was founded on 22 October 1998, when Viktor Levada's Levadia Group OU became the official sponsor of Maardu based Esiliiga club Olump, which subsequently changed its name to Levadia. The club won the 1998 Esiliiga and were promoted to the Meistriliiga. In January 1999, Sergei Ratnikov was appointed as manager. In 1999, Levadia became the first team to win the Meistriliiga, the Estonian Cup and the Estonian Supercup in the same year. Levadia managed to repeat their success by winning another treble in the following year. In the 2000–01 UEFA Champions League, Levadia defeated Total Network Solutions 2–6 on aggregate in the first qualifying round, but lost to Shakhtar Donetsk 2–9 on aggregate in the second qualifying round. Following the loss to Shakhtar Donetsk, Ratnikov was sacked.

In 2001, Valeri Bondarenko was appointed as a manager. Levadia failed to defend their title, finishing the 2001 season in third place and in November 2001, Bondarenko was replaced by Pasi Rautiainen. Under Rautiainen, Levadia finished the 2002 Meistriliiga as runners-up, only two points behind champions Flora. After the season, Rautiainen resigned and was replaced by Franco Pancheri in January 2003. Pancheri coached Levadia for just 9 Meistriliiga matches, before he was sacked in June 2003. He was replaced by Tarmo Ruutli and Levadia finished the 2003

This page also has a version in other languages :  ФКИ Левадия (russian)