Fuzinar

Nogometni klub Fuzinar (English: Fuzinar Football Club), commonly referred to as NK Fuzinar or simply Fuzinar, is a Slovenian football club from Ravne na Koroskem which plays in the Slovenian Second League under the sponsorship name Fuzinar Vzajemci. The club was founded in 1937.

History

The club was founded in August 1937 as SK Slovan Gustanj. They joined subassociation competitions in the 1939–40 season and won the second tier Koroska group ahead of their neighbors SK Mislinja. In the next year, they played in Maribor League West, but the season was interrupted because of the outbreak of World War II in Yugoslavia. After the war they first competed as a football section of Partizan Gustanj, but then formed SD Fuzinar in 1947. They again played in Maribor subassociation leagues until 1950, when they qualified for SR Slovenia second division. Fuzinar finished dead last and immediately returned to local level.

Their biggest success in the time of SFR Yugoslavia came in the 1965–66 season, when they played on a new stadium in newly-formed Slovenian Zonal League East and finished second. Therefore they played in qualifiers for the Slovenian Republic League with Svoboda, but lost 6–4 on aggregate. After that Fuzinar continued playing in zonal and regional leagues until 1988, but they never came close to promotion again. There was also an attempt of merging all the clubs from the region under the name of Koroska in the 1979–80 season, but the short-lived project proved to be unsuccessful.

After the independence of Slovenia in 1991, they found themselves in the lowest possible league and the club was reorganized as KNK Fuzinar in the mid-1990s. They qualified for the Slovenian Third League in 1999, but were soon relegated again. Their climb started in 2012, when former top division player Niko Podvinski came to the club as player/manager, and the club gained promotion from fifth to third division in two years. In 2017 they finished third, but the champions Maribor B declined promotion, so F