HNK Rijeka

Hrvatski nogometni klub Rijeka (English: Croatian Football Club 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.

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 (captain). 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 (and the stadium changed its name to Campo Sportivo Olympia). 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 (later renamed into CS Gloria) 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.

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 (today's Inter, also forced into a brand image change by the new regime), Juventus and Napoli played at the Kantrida stadium (renamed to Stadio Borgomarina in those years). 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 (then renamed Stadio del Littorio) in 1935, Fiumana hosted AS Roma. In June 1941, it became champion of the newly created Italian Serie C.