Slovan Liberec

FC Slovan Liberec /ˈsloʊvən ˈlɪbərɛts/ (Czech pronunciation: [ˈslovan ˈlɪbɛrɛts]), commonly referred to as Slovan Liberec or simply Slovan, is a Czech football club founded in the city of Liberec. The club is one of the most successful in the Czech Republic, having won three league titles and the domestic cup since 1993. Glass-making company Preciosa a.s. is the current main sponsor of the club.

History

The Early Years

The first predecessor of the Liberec football club was the Reichenberger Fussballklub (RFK) which was founded in 1899 (renamed to Reichenberger Sportklub [RSK] in 1904). Because Liberec was a city where the majority of inhabitants were of German nationality, until 1945, it was Germans who first established clubs and played their own league. The first Czech football club, SK Liberec, was established after World War I on 11 May 1919. In 1922, the original German club FK Rapid Ober Rosenthal became the Czech club SK Rapid Horni Ruzodol. In the same year, another Liberec-based club – SK Doubi – was established, followed by AFK Straz bezpecnosti in 1931. On 27 February 1934, SK Liberec took on the new name of Slavia Liberec so that the Czech footballers could affirm their club's Slavic character at a time when the Nazi regime in neighbouring Germany already represented a serious threat to the former Czechoslovakia as well as all of Europe.

The rivalry that once existed in Liberec between Rapid and Slavia can be compared to a smaller version of the rivalry between Prague's two most famous clubs, Sparta and Slavia. In 1938, the Munich Agreement was signed, in which representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany forced Czechoslovakia to withdraw from their border area and surrender it to Germany. After the city of Liberec was incorporated into the Third Reich, Czech football in the city came to a halt for a full seven years.

Post-War Era

At the end of World War II and with the liberation of Czechoslovakia

This page also has a version in other languages :  Слован (Либерец) (russian)