HNK Rijeka
Hrvatski nogometni klub Rijeka, commonly referred to as HNK Rijeka, is a Croatian professional football club based in the city of Rijeka.
HNK Rijeka competes in Croatia's top division, Supersport HNL, of which they have been members since its foundation in 1992 and is the current champion. During the reconstruction of Stadion Kantrida, their traditional home ground, they have been based at Stadion Rujevica. Rijeka's traditional home colours throughout its history have been white, sky blue and gold.
The club was founded in 1904, with the football team being active at last since 1906, and following the tumultuous political changes that swept the border city of Rijeka in the following decades, it changed its name to U.S. Fiumana in 1926, to S.C.F. Quarnero in 1946, to NK Rijeka in 1954, and finally HNK Rijeka in 1995. Rijeka is the third-most successful Croatian football club, having won two Croatian First League titles, two Yugoslav Cups, seven Croatian Cups, one Croatian Super Cup, Serie C 1940–41, the Italian Federal Cup 1927–28 and the 1977–78 Balkans Cup.
History
1906–1926
The club was founded on 21 April 1904 as Club Sportivo Olimpia by Antonio Marchich, Aristodemo Susmel, Agesilao Satti, Carlo Colussi, the brothers Romeo and Alessandro Mitrovich during the time Rijeka was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a Corpus Separatum of the Hungarian Crown. The club was originally founded as a tennis-lawn, football, swimming, cycling and athletics club. The first official activities of the football section recorded by contemporary chronicles happened on 25 November 1906, with historians still investigating the football activities in the previous 2,5 years. For lack of better data, this date is currently officially taken as the beginning of HNK Rijeka as a football club. This also makes Rijeka the oldest still active association football club on the territory of today's Republic of Croatia.While many clubs in town and the region often had specific ethnic leanings, Olimpia intentionally had a very international soul, with Italian, Croatian, Hungarian, and German players all playing and working with each other in unison. The oldest line-up known from Rijeka's pioneer years was: Duimovic, Smoivar, Penka, Brosnich, R. Mittrovich, Lenardon, Satti, Novodnik, A. Mittrovich, Paulovatz, Cittovich. Initially, the club played its matches on the main Scoglietto square, in front of the local Honved HQ, but moved to Kantrida stadium during the following decade. Initially, Olimpia played in black and white garments, but in the 1910s, the club also used a fully white kit.
During the following years, Olimpia will be joined by several other local football clubs from the city of Rijeka and will continue the legacy of Fiumei Atletikai Club as the main city club, when Atletico discontinued its football section in the course of the 1910s. Among the many clubs being founded in town during these years, a side, in particular, will soon rise as fierce arch-rival to Olimpia: Doria arose from the proletarian classes and the humble old town dwellers of the industry-rich port town on the Adriatic. While Olimpia was associated with the wealthier classes, mostly players from working-class families performed for Gloria; therefore, the club found most of its sympathisers among the poorer part of the population. Olimpia was renamed to Olympia on 9 January 1918 during a meeting of its board and the new president became the Fiuman writer Antonio de Schlemmer, possibly as an anti-irredentist move. During these years, it achieved its first major local and international successes: it became the champion of the Free State of Fiume championship in 1921, and it won several Julian March and North-Eastern Italian championships in the following years, soon becoming the strongest side in the Alpe-Adria region.
1926–1943
On 2 September 1926, following Mussolini's reforms of the FIGC and the 1924 Fiume putsch led by local Italians, which brought to the annexation of the independent Free State of Fiume to Italy, Olympia was then merged with its arch-rival Gloria into the Unione Sportiva Fiumana. Pietro Pasquali was picked as the new president of the club. Two years later, Fiumana won its first national trophy when it reached first place in the Italian Federal Cup. The following season saw the club playing in the Italian Serie A, with some of the biggest Italian clubs such as Ambrosiana, Juventus and Napoli played at the Kantrida stadium. Despite a decent performance in Serie A, the city, now impoverished by the annexation and cut off from its natural economic hinterland, was not in the financial position to compete with the biggest cities in Italy and following these successes, the club had to see many of its stars signed by major Italian sides. During most of the 1930s and 1940s, the club competed in the second and third tier of the Italian competitions. At the reopening of a refurbished Kantrida in 1935, Fiumana hosted AS Roma. In June 1941, it became champion of the newly created Italian Serie C.Serie C's last season before the fall of fascist Italy in 1943 saw Fiumana end in third place. Mostly from workers' families, the players leaned heavily toward the partisan movement, often joining it outright. They didn't participate in the Italian Social Republic championships and the Adriatic Littoral championship set up by the German occupational force. Nonetheless, the players kept playing several matches with other local clubs and against sides organised or brought in by the German occupational authorities. Worth mentioning are the excessive celebrations for some victories against the German sides that brought several players to be imprisoned and sent to various concentration camps in Germany, and a last ceremonial game between the old legends of Olympia and Gloria that was held on 15 June 1944 while allied planes were bombing the city's surroundings. Most Fiumana players joined the partisan movement and helped the Yugoslav liberation movement, with many ending up in imprisonment and being sent to concentration camps.
1943–1954
Following the liberation of the city from the Nazi occupation and the subsequent occupation by Yugoslav troops, and due to the uncertain future status of the city during the long Paris peace conference, the club resumed its activities in the post-war period under the slightly rebranded name of Rappresentativa Sindacale Fiumana. It went on playing several games against the most notable teams of the newly constituted Yugoslav state, beating Dinamo Zagreb 4–2, Akademičar Zagreb 7–2 and Metalac Beograd 2–0. During the interim post-war year, and before the first edition of the Yugoslav First League, R.S. Fiumana played against some of its future Balkan rivals. The authorities also set up an unofficial city tournament among factories named after Fiumana's late captain Giovanni Maras, who died heroically in partisan combat on the nearby Mount Risnjak. Despite Maras and most of his colleagues' partisan allegiance and the many hardships endured by them in Nazi concentration camps, the name Fiumana came soon to be considered too Italian for a city that the Yugoslav occupational authorities were trying to annex by force before the official peace treaty could be signed.As in most other cities in Yugoslavia, in 1946 the communist authorities established a new identity for the city's most representative club in order for it to take part in the upcoming Yugoslav championship and rebranded and restructured the club into Società Cultura Fisica Quarnero, which later added also the bilingual title Sportsko Društvo Kvarner. The new name followed the geographic neutral naming conventions requested to local councils by the central authorities in Belgrade in order to approve the reestablishment of the local sport club activities and to participate in competitions. The initiative came from Ettore Mazzieri, the city's sports commissioner for the Yugoslav military administration and a previous Fiumana manager. The first match with the Quarnero identify was played on 7 August 1946, bringing revenge against Hajduk Split for the loss from the previous year. The club began the new course with a resounding 2–0 against the best Yugoslav side of the time. Quarnero initially continued to play in the Fiumana amaranto colours, but started switching colours after the first few championships games, and continued appearing with new kits every few matches until season 1957–58. Luigi Sošić and, in particular, Giovanni Cucera took over the role of the first post-war president, shaping the new communist direction of the club. At the same time, all former Fiumana players and staff carried on playing in the renamed club for the next few years before the Italian exodus slowly forced many of them to leave the city after the season 1947–48. As all clubs in Yugoslavia had to transform general sports clubs following the Stalinist model imposed by Belgrade in 1945, S.C.F. Quarnero incorporated 11 other sections in addition to football, including boxing, fencing, basketball and tennis. The international tennis champion Orlando Sirola started his career at the club before his exile.
The authorities in Belgrade soon decided that Rijeka's club should be invited to participate in the first Yugoslav First League in 1946–47 as an external guest, representing the occupied Zone B of the Julian March region, but only after a play-off with the Pula-based club Unione Sportiva Operaia. When the city of Rijeka was assigned to Yugoslavia in February 1947, and Tito broke all ties with Stalin in 1948, most Yugoslav clubs underwent a further re-organisation. Thus, in 1948, Quarnero became once again an all-football club, and the name was also modified into Società Calcio Quarnero – Nogometni Klub Kvarner. During the early period playing in Yugoslavia's competitions, Kvarner reached moderate success in various national and local leagues. Still, the club was relegated at the end of their inaugural season in the Yugoslav First League in 1946–47 due to a purely political decision to favour Ponziana, after Quarnero had already secured its stay in the first league during the season. Upon securing Rijeka for Yugoslavia, the Belgrade authorities were now trying to pander to Trieste's residents through sport in the hope of annexing also that city to Yugoslavia.
The club continued to play with mixed results in Yugoslav football's second and third divisions. The club achieved mediocre results over the next ten years, concurrently with Rijeka's autochthonous population slowly leaving hometown over the years. Consequently, the club lost many of its best players because many opted to leave Yugoslavia and move overseas.
In 1954, following rising ethnic tensions around the Trieste Crisis and the subsequent elimination of all forms of bilingualism in the city, paired with a desire to have a brand more recognizable and associated the club was further renamed into NK Rijeka.