The Neftyanik Stadium is the home arena of the Russian Premier League football club Ufa.
Dossier
The oilman stadium opened in 1967. Location - Ufa (Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia). Last reconstruction - 2012-2015 year. The capacity of the arena is 15,200 spectators. Football pitch is artificial. The heating system is automatic.
Introduction
Stadiums exist to host football matches. And good sports arenas are needed for teams of a decent level to play on them. A decent level is the level of the Premier League. And to have in your city a club at the level of the Russian first legion is a great honor.
The President of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Rustem Khamitov, spoke about the warm summer day of 2010. Recently, he has increasingly wondered about the idea of gathering a high-level team in Ufa. Another of his goals is to reconstruct the stadium of FC Neftyanik.
A bit of history
The main football club of Bashkortostan was FC Bashinformsvyaz-Dynamo. This team played in the second division of the PFL. The club management was tasked with solving it as soon as possible: to create a team of the Premier League level in the capital. The initial stage of this project required renaming the team and inviting a top coach to bring the club to a high competitive level.
The solution to problem No. 1
Since December 23, 2010 the team began to be called Ufa. And the famous player in the past, and now the coach Andrei Kanchelskis, began to fulfill the task. On July 2, 2012, by the decision of a meeting of the general meeting of the Football National League, the FC Ufa club became a team entitled to play in the FNL. And this meant that the goal was one step closer. True, the head coach of the team already had nothing to do with this. He was fired along with the club’s CEO.
The new coach of FC Ufa Igor Kolyvanov was obliged to solve the task. And he coped with it brilliantly. Having taken fourth place in the FNL league in the 2013/2014 season, the club was given the opportunity to play butt games with the Tom team. According to their results (5: 1 and 1: 3), Ufa for the first time made its way into the echelon of the strongest Russian championship teams, having received the status of a Premier League club. Performances in his first season (12th place) allowed the team to retain a place in the main football championship of Russia. By this time, task 2 was already solved.
The solution to problem No. 2
In February 2012, a project was approved under which the Neftyanik stadium was subsequently reconstructed. To solve this problem, 300 million rubles were allocated. According to the project, an automatic heating system and an artificial grass lawn should be installed on the football field . The arena itself must accommodate at least 16 thousand individual spectator seats (instead of the previous 10,200 seats). The adjacent territory should be equipped with a car park for 900 transport units, and it was planned to build a hotel with 50 beds near the stadium. The deadline is October 2014.
Here's how the reconstruction of the arena took place in stages:
- June 2012 - dismantling the guest rostrum and the stadium administration building;
- November 2013 - the beginning of the construction of new stands, lighting and field heating systems, updating treadmills;
- February 2015 - completion of work on arrangement of under-tributary inputs / outputs, electronic scoreboard, over-tribune protective visor.
Currently, the reconstruction of the Neftyanik stadium (Ufa) (photo above) is completed. On August 9, 2015, the Russian football championship match between the teams Ufa - Zenit (St. Petersburg) was held in the arena.
By the way, according to the head of the press service of FC Ufa Sergey Tertyshny (said in 2012), the old name of the arena is no longer relevant. In light of the team’s possible participation in European competition, it became necessary to rename the Neftyanik stadium to the Bashkortostan Arena or Ufa Stadium. However, the majority of the fans' votes were given to the old name - “Oilman”. The stadium, which has no relation to oil at present, did not want to change its initial name to please high officials.
And where did the team conduct matches during the reconstruction of the structure? Until August 2015, the Dynamo stadium became the home arena for the Ufa club. It was built in 1930. At present, it is laid on artificial turf that meets all the requirements for arenas that host teams of the elite division. The capacity of the stands is 4,500 people.
In conclusion, I would like to note that in the days of the Soviet Union in Bashkiria there was FC Neftyanik, founded in 1947 on the basis of the Wings of the Soviets (Chernikovsk) and Dynamo (Ufa) teams. Later it was called "Builder", "Gastello", "Agidel", "Sunrise". In the championships of Russia, he took part in various competitions of the second and other divisions from 1992 to 2005 and had nothing in common except the name, with a magnificent arena in Ufa.