Vladivostok: the city with the longest away days in the world

Vladivostok is so far east that it's closer to China and North Korea than to any other major Russian city

Luch Vladivostok cleebrating a goal [Getty Images]

The Russian Federation is a gigantic country. It is by far the largest in the world, being almost twice as big as second-placed Canada, and it spans over two continents despite it being large enough to be a continent by itself: Russia's larger than Europe and almost as large as South America!

Despite it's size, football in the country works the same way it works in almost all other places on Earth. A Nation-wide professional game, and regionalized amateur leagues to accomodate travel and cost savings for smaller clubs.

This regionalization however only starts in the Second League Division B, the fourth tier of the pyramid. The three levels above it - the Premier League, the First League and the Second League Division A - all allow matches between clubs from all over the country.

This usually isn't an issue. Russian football is heavily centralized in one side of the country, the European side west of the Ural mountains, where the main cities Moscow and St. Petersburg are located and where two thirds of the population lives.

 

St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia's main cities, are "only" 700 kms apart [Image: TASS]

However, there are some outliers. With three different tiers being Nation-wide leagues, there's bound to be some clubs from far away places that achieve promotion and generate fixtures where jet-lag becomes a decisive factor.

The city of Vladivostok is often tought of as the edge of the Earth. It is the major city in Russia that lies the furthest from the capital city of Moscow, some 6,400 kilometres (4,000 miles) as the crow flies. It's so far away that if you try to draw a straight line between the two cities on Google Maps, the line becomes so curved that it looks like one of those "can you believe this is an airplane's route between Melbourne and Los Angeles?" posts!

Surely you've seen this kind of image

And if you plan on traveling by car between Moscow and Vladivostok, the distance becomes 9,000 kilometres/5,600 miles. It's easy to understand how tough any away day becomes for any club involved in this kind of fixture.

Despite the distances, some clubs from the Russian Far East have made their way to the National leagues to play against clubs from the other side of the country. Currently, the most successful club from the region is SKA-Khabarovsk, who play around 30 kilometres away from the Chinese border and 800 kilometres north from Vladivostok.

 

The old club: FC Luch Vladivostok

The most successfull club from the Russian Far East was FC Luch Vladivostok, which played in the Premier League in 1993 and from 2006 to 2008. In the glory days, their home matches in Vladivostok were considered tough challenges for the traveling visitors, and in large part this was due to the massive distance to cover to get there.

Luch players celebrate a win [Luch Energiya-Vladivostok's Facebook]

 

Legendary CSKA Moscow goalkeeped Igor Akinfeev was once quoted suggesting Luch should just join the Japanese league instead. Considering this was said after a 0-4 defeat in Vladivostok, it's up to the reader to decide whether Akinfeev was bitter because he had to go so far only to concede four goals or if he was genuinely concerned about the amount of travel his colleagues from Vladivostok had to endure every other week.

In 2006 a trio of fans from St. Petersburg drove 15,000 kilometres across Russia to attend Zenit's match away at Luch Vladivostok. When they got there, their Honda broke down. Because of this issue they were forced to go home by taking the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, which usually takes around a week to travel across the country! Because of their incredible journey, Zenit gifted them a new car.

In the 2010's the club started to have financial problems. The key players were sold, some others were evicted from their places because they couldn't pay rent and had not received a salary in months. It got so bad that the supporters had to feed them because they couldn't afford it anymore.

The struggles continued, and as the pandemic came in 2020 the government of the region of Primorsky cancelled all professional sports contracts to fund the fight against the virus, which dropped the clubbed to the amateur leagues. This drop never came anyway, because FC Luch folded and never returned to playing football.

 

The current club: FC Dynamo Vladivostok

After its foundation in 1944, Dynamo Vladivostok saw more dissolution and rebirths over its history than major successes. The best result this amateur club ever got was the second place they earned in the 1957 Soviet Class B championship behind SKVO Khabarosvk. They were not allowed to be promoted to the first division anyway so that was as high as they could go. Other successes included seven Primorsky championships, nine cups of the Primorsky territory and a zonal cup.

 

Dynamo Vladivostok players after scoring a goal [From Dynamo's website]

When FC Luch was dissolved in 2020, Vladivostok lacked a football club, so in June 2021 this historic yet underachieving club was revived by Eduard Sandler, who apparently is now Dynamo Vladivostok's basketball head coach.

Anyway, the club managed to be included in the 2021-22 Second League (the third tier), where they finished 4th out of 11 clubs in the first phase, qualifying for the promotion round in which they ended up 7th. All in all, a decent result for a newly formed club.

A year later they once again finished 4th in the first round, reaching the promotion round once more but just like the previous year promotion was way too far to be achieved. The positive aspect of the first couple years was that the club never looked in danger of dropping into the relegation group, achieving a stable presence in the league.

When 2023 came around, the league was reorganized and split into two tiers, the Second League Division A and Division B. Because Division B switched to the summer schedule, this season only lasted half a year, and, hear hear, Dynamo Vladivostok finished 4th again, although the group now had 18 clubs.

Dynamo had to wait until last year, the 2024 season, to finally achieve a title. The club won Division B's group 3 comfortably, and earned promotion to the Division A Second Stage Silver Group. To make it short, Division A itself is split into two groups lasting half the season: the Gold Group is basically a promotion group, while the Silver Group is a relegation group.

Dynamo are very close to achieving safety, as they only need three more points from their last three matches, but still have hopes of qualifying for the next Gold Group!

 

The stadium

Dynamo Vladivostok play at the Dynamo Stadium in Vladivostok. Yes, the name is not exactly interesting in any way, but it has always been called like that. It hosts up to 10,200 spectators, but the capacity can be increased to 17,000 if necessary.

It was built in 1957 on the shores of Vladivostok near a yacht club on the Japanese Sea, and it hosted FC Luch Vladivostok's matches from 1958 until their dissolution in 2020, when the seats had the same colours as the club's kit.

 

The Dynamo Stadium in Vladivostok back then [From public.fotki.com]

It now hosts Vladivostok's new club and the seats also reflect that change, as they have been switched to blue and white. 

 

The Dynamo Stadium today [From vladivostok.bezformata.com]

Over the years, this stadium so far away from Moscow has seen many clubs capitulate. Spartak, CSKA, Lokomotiv and Dynamo Moscow, Rostov and Rubin Kazan all lost in Vladivostok during FC Luch's spell in the Premier League between 2006 and 2008!

Waiting for the day Dynamo Vladivostok bring Premier League football back to the Russian Far East, enjoy Luch's famous win over CSKA Moscow which made Akinfeev wish Vladivostok never existed.