Slovan Map
FC Slovan Liberec is a Czech football club founded in the city of Liberec. The club is one of the most successful in the Czech Republic; winning two league titles and the domestic cup in past ten years. FC Slovan Liberec is also one of the richest clubs in the Czech league. The main sponsor is Preciosa a.s. a glassmaking company.
Since Liberec was, until 1945, a city where the majority of inhabitants were of German nationality, it was Germans who first established clubs and played their own league. The first Czech football club SK Liberec was established after World War I, on 11 May 1919. In 1922, the originally German club FK Rapid Ober Rosenthal turned into the Czech club SK Rapid Horní R?žodol. In the same year, another Liberec-based club - SK Doubí - was established, followed by AFK Stráž bezpe?nosti in 1931. On 27 February 1934, SK Liberec took on the new name of Slavia Liberec so that the Czech footballers could affirm their club's Slavic character at a time when the Nazi regime in neighbouring Germany already represented a serious threat to the former Czechoslovakia as well as all of Europe.
The rivalry that once existed in Liberec between Rapid and Slavia can be compared to a smaller version of the rivalry between Prague's two most famous clubs, Sparta and Slavia. In 1938 the Munich Agreement was signed, in which representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany forced Czechoslovakia to withdraw from their border area and surrender it to Germany. After Liberec was incorporated into the German Reich, Czech football in the city came to a halt for a full seven years.
Nearby cities include Burgettstown, Clinton, Weirton, Oakdale, Follansbee.