Moscow's Big Four Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lokomotiv

FC Lokomotiv Moscow traces its history back to 1922, when it was founded as Kazanka. Two years later, the club began associating itself with the railways, when it recruited a number of players that also worked for the railways in Moscow. In 1936, the Lokomotiv Voluntary Sports Society was founded, representing railway workers across the Soviet Union.

At this time, the Kazana club was absorbed into the society and became one of a number of football clubs throughout the country to carry the Lokomotiv name. Lokomotiv Moscow played the first ever game between club sides in the Soviet Top League, when they faced Dynamo Leningrad on 22 May 1936.

The club won the first Soviet Cup in the same year, but was not regularly at the top end of club football in the Soviet Union.

It was not until the post-Soviet era that Lokomotiv won its first league title, winning the Russian Premier League in 2002.

Answer: Dynamo

FC Dynamo Moscow's history pre-dates the Russian Revolution, starting as it does with the foundation of the Sokolniki Football Club (KFS) in 1907. In 1923, Felix Dzerzhinsky ordered the creation of a new sports society sponsored by the GPU, which at the time was the Soviet Union's secret police and intelligence service, taking the name "Dynamo".

At this time, one of the KFS players started a football section as part of Dynamo, which led to KFS being absorbed into the society and taking on the identity of Dynamo Moscow.

In 1936, the club became the first to win the Soviet title, beginning a sustained period of success that lasted throughout the Soviet era, when the club won the league title eleven times, finishing as runners-up another eleven, as well as winning the Soviet Cup six times, and becoming the first Soviet club to reach a European final.

In the post-Soviet era however, the club has seen less success - it finished runner-up in the Russian Top League in 1994, and reached three Russian Cup finals in five seasons between 1995 and 1999, winning one, but did not reach another final until 2012, and were relegated for the first time in 2015, gaining promotion the following season.

Answer: CSKA

PFC CSKA Moscow's foundation dates from 1911, when Moscow's amateur skiing society founded a football section. Following the revolution, when sports societies were being founded, the Armed Forces set up a number of regionally based organisations under this system, of which the Moscow-based one became known as the Central Sports Club of the Army, which eventually came to be known by the initials CSKA.

The football section of the skiing society was absorbed into the Central Sports Club in 1923. Although the club came second in the 1938 Soviet Top League, it did not begin achieving sustained success until after the Second World War - from 1946 to 1948, it became the first club to win three successive league titles, with another pair back-to-back in 1950 and 1951, and four Soviet Cup wins over the same period to 1955.

However, after this, it went through a fallow period, with only a single league championship success in 1970, and two relegations in the mid 1980s. Upon the clubs return to the Top League, it finished runners-up in 1990, before becoming the last Soviet champions in 1991.

In the post-Soviet era, the club had to wait until the start of the 21st century for renewed success - between 2002 and 2011, the club finished outside the top two in the Russian league just three times, winning three titles, also winning five cups, and becoming the first Russian club to win a European trophy (the UEFA Cup in 2005).

Answer: Spartak

FC Spartak Moscow's lineage goes back to 1883, and the foundation of the Russian branch of the "Sokol" pan-Slavic gymnastics society, which was founded to promote participation first in gymnastics, and then other sports, including football. In 1922, this became the Moscow Sport Circle, with the football section eventually becoming associated with the food workers' union.

In 1935, a group of different sports clubs associated with various unions and workers' organisations banded together to form the first national Voluntary Sports Society, which adopted the name "Spartak" after the Roman slave Spartacus. From this point, the Moscow football club became known as Spartak Moscow. Spartak quickly established itself as one of the Soviet Union's dominant forces, winning three league titles and two cups before the Second World War, and continuing a sustained run of success in the post-war period.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it rapidly became the dominant club in the early years of the Russian league, winning nine of the first ten league titles.

However, after 2001 this ended, with the club then going sixteen years before winning the league again in season 2016-17.

Answer: Dynamo

Prior to 1936, the league championship in the Soviet Union had been contested by regional and city representative teams. The idea of a league championship contested by club sides came from Nikolai Starostin, the head of the Spartak sports society, who proposed a league of eight professional club sides contesting two championships a year.

This became the Soviet Top League, with the first season consisting of a spring and autumn championship, with the first taking place between May and July 1936. Each of the seven teams (the four from Moscow, Dynamo and Krasnaya Zarya from Leningrad, and Dynamo Kiev) in the league played each other once, for a total of six games, with Dynamo Moscow winning the very first league title, having won all six games.

The autumn championship took place between September and October, and saw the number of teams increased to eight with the addition of Dynamo Tblisi. The autumn championship was won by Spartak Moscow, who won four and drew two of their seven games. In between the two league seasons, a knockout cup was played, which was won by Lokomotiv Moscow.

Answer: True

The 1991 Soviet Top League began in March, with Dynamo Kiev as the defending champions. Sixteen teams from across the Soviet Union took part in the competition, although clubs from the Baltic states and Georgia elected not to take part. Of the clubs taking part, five (Dynamo, Lokomotiv, Spartak, CSKA and Torpedo) came from Moscow, with Lokomotiv having been promoted the previous season.

Despite Spartak Moscow and Dynamo Kiev having dominated the league for a decade, it was CSKA Moscow, who had only returned to the top league the season before, who eventually secured the league title by two points from Spartak, with Torpedo Moscow finishing third. Following the conclusion of the league season, the remaining teams in the Soviet League withdrew to move into competitions run by the newly independent republics. Six of the sixteen teams in the Soviet top league (the five from Moscow plus Spartak Vladikavkaz) went on to form part of the new twenty-team Russian top league from 1992.

Answer: Spartak

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a new league structure was formed in Russia, with the Top League established as the top tier of Russian football. This had to be formed through the recruitment of a number of Russian clubs from throughout the old Soviet league - six came from the previous season's Top League, eleven from the First League (second tier) and three from the Second League's regional divisions. To reduce the number of matches, the twenty teams were then split into a pair of ten-team groups, with the top four in each qualifying for a championship group phase, with the winner of this being crowned as the league champion. Spartak Moscow finished first in their regular season group, winning 11 of their 16 games, before also topping the championship group to win their first Russian title, but their thirteenth league title overall.

Answer: Spartak

The Luzhniki Stadium was originally built in 1955, following the success of the Soviet team at the 1952 Summer Olympics, which led to a requirement for improved training facilities for Soviet athletes, as well as a desire for a sporting complex of international standard.

This led to the construction of the 100,000 seat Luzhniki (then called the Grand Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium), which opened in July 1956. At the time, Spartak Moscow had no home stadium of its own, and so played at several different grounds in the city.

The presence of the new super stadium in Moscow saw the club move in and make it their home for many years. In 1982, during a UEFA Cup match between Spartak and HFC Haarlem, a deadly crush occurred at the end of the game which caused the deaths of 66 fans. Spartak eventually played their last game at the Luzhniki in May 2013, having made the decision to build their own stadium, the Otkritie Arena, which opened in September 2014.

However, although it was never their main stadium, CSKA played a number of high-profile games at the Luzhniki while their own stadium was under construction.

Answer: Dynamo

Dynamo Moscow qualified for the 1971-72 European Cup-Winners Cup having beaten Dynamo Tblisi in the final of the 1970 Soviet Cup. Entering in the first round, they played Greek side Olympiakos, winning 3-2 on aggregate, then faced Eskiºehirspor of Turkey, who they beat 2-0 over two legs, and Red Star Belgrade of Yugoslavia, who lost 3-2 on aggregate.

In the semi-final they played East German side Dynamo Berlin, with the tie eventually finishing 2-2 on aggregate following successive 1-1 draws in Berlin and Lviv (Dynamo were forced to play the later rounds away from Moscow due to the temperature), with Dynamo winning a penalty shoot-out 4-1.

This saw them reach the final where they played Scottish side Rangers at Camp Nou in Barcelona. The Scottish club went into a 3-0 lead just after half-time that, despite the Soviet side's efforts, which saw them pull two goals back, Dynamo were not able to overcome.

Although both Dynamo Kiev and Dynamo Tblisi subsequently won the Cup Winners Cup, it was another 33 years before a club from Russia again played in a European final (CSKA in the 2005 UEFA Cup Final, which they won).

Answer: False

CSKA qualified for the 2004-05 UEFA Champions League through winning the 2003 Russian Premier League. However, although they managed to qualify for the competition's group stage, they finished third in Group H behind Chelsea and FC Porto, and dropped out of the competition into the knockout stage of the UEFA Cup.

In this competition, the club negotiated a total of four two-legged ties, defeating Benfica of Portugal, Partizan Belgrade from Serbia and Montenegro, French side Auxerre and Parma from Italy to reach the final.

This was against Portuguese side Sporting CP (aka Sporting Lisbon), with the game being played in Sporting's own stadium, the Estadio Jose Alvalade. Despite Sporting taking the lead in the 29th minute, goals from Aleksei Berezutski, Yuri Zhirkov and Vágner Love gave CSKA a 3-1 victory, making them the first team from Russia, either in the Soviet or post-Soviet era, to win a European trophy.