FC Koper - History

History

From the records, it appears that football in Koper was played as early as in the 1920s, but officially, the club took the name NK Koper in the year 1955, when it was formed by the merger of two football teams: Aurora and Meduza. The club played under this name in different Yugoslavian leagues until 1991 and was one of the most successful Slovenian clubs. After Slovenia became independent, the club started to play in the 1.SNL and 2.SNL. At the beginning of the 1990s, the club was achieving mid-table success. By the end of the 1990s, the club had been relegated to the second division twice, had serious financial problems and renamed itself to FC Koper, thereby avoiding the necessity of paying off its debts. With the advent of the new millennium, FC Koper consistently achieved positions in the upper half of the table (achieving third place in the 2001–02 season, its highest since Slovenian independence). In the 2003–04 season, they were playing in a European competition for the first time since 1991: the UEFA Intertoto Cup. Two years of mid-table anonymity and significant financial difficulties followed, in part because the former owner, Georg Suban, left substantial debts to the club and took half the team with him when he moved to the other 1.SNL team NK Mura.

The fans took control of the club and tried to improve its finances to save it from going bankrupt and disappearing like three other major Slovenian clubs (NK Olimpija, NK Mura and NK Ljubljana), with reasonable success. In the 2005–06 season, Mladen Rudonja returned to the club and brought with him the Serbian-American businessman Milan Mandarić, who paid off all the remaining debts. After the first half of the season, before the arrival of the new patron, Koper was battling against relegation, but in the second part of the season, with a new coach, Milivoj Braćun, the club started an unbeaten run that led them to reach the 3rd place in the 1.SNL and to win the Slovenian Cup for the first time, FC Koper's first trophy since the Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia. This also qualified the team to play in the UEFA Cup qualifying rounds in the 2006–2007 season. The following seasons were more difficult, with the club narrowly avoiding relegation in 2009. In the 2009–10 season, the team was expanded and, under the leadership of veteran playmaker/director-of-football Miran Pavlin eventually won the Slovenian league championship for the first time, winning a place in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers, where they succumbed to a spirited 5–4 agg. defeat by Dinamo Zagreb (1–5, 3–0). In the aftermath, Pavlin left the club.

• 1955: Fusion from Aurora Koper and Meduza Koper to NK Koper
• 1990: Renaming to FC Koper Capodistria
• 2002: Renaming to FC Koper
• 2003: Renaming to FC Anet Koper
• 2008: Renaming to FC Luka Koper