SC Stal Alchevsk

The team FC Stal Alchevsk is a professional football club from the Ukrainian Premier League. Stal literally means steel when translated from Slavic. The club joined the Ukrainian Premier League in 2000-2001 for its 10^th season. They finished in the next to last place and unfortunately were relegated back to the Persha Liha where they remained until the 2005-2006 season, for which they and FC Kharkiv achieved promotion back to the Ukrainian Premier League.

The Persha Liha is the Ukrainian First League. This league is lower than the Vyscha Liha or Ukrainian Premier League. The top 2 teams from the Persha Liha are promoted to the Ukrainian Premier League, while the 2 lowest teams from the U.P.L. are demoted to the Persha Liha. The Persha Liha is the second level of the football league in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Premier League or Vyscha Liha is the highest Division of Ukrainian annual football championship. The league was founded in 1991 and 2006-2007 is the league’s 16th season. There are 16 clubs in the competition:

Ukrainian Premier League 2006-2007

FC Stal Alchevsk Squad

Forwards: Oleksandr Akimenko, Oleksandr Savanchuk, Sendley Sidney Bito (Netherlands), Serhiy Gribanov, Serhiy Sernetskiy, Ara Akobyan (Armenia, on loan from Metalurh Donetsk)

Midfielders: Roman Voinarovsky, Artyom Kasyanov, Georgi Cimakuridze (Georgia), Artem Kosyanov, Dmytro Gorbushin, Samuel Okunowo (Nigeria, on loan from Metalurh Donetsk), Burnell Okana-Stacy (Democratic Republic of Congo), Peter Kondratyuk, Ruben Gomez (Argentina, on loan from Metalurh Donetsk), Roman Konovalov

Defenders: Andriy Gavryushov, Oleksandr Polovkov, Ivan Shuga, Boban Grncarov (Macedonia, on loan from Metalurh Donetsk), Marco Grubelic (Serbia, on loan from Metalurh Donetsk), Andriy Boiko

Goalkeepers: Andriy Komarytsky, Vadim Startsev

Head Coaches:

Nikolai Pavlov (2006) and Ton Kaanen (Netherlands, 2006-)

Grounds

Stal Stadium is a multi use stadium in the city of Alchevsk, currently used for football matches and with a capacity of 9,200 people.

The city of Alchevsk has been part of the news since on January 22, 2006, the district heating system of the city almost entirely collapsed after an underground heat pipeline cracked in an usually freeze weather. As a result, heating equipment in the majority of Alchevsk's buildings was frozen and ruptured, leaving about 60,000 residents only under protection of individual electric heaters. A few days later the sewage system also froze lacking influx of warm tap water.

The investigation revealed the massive long-time negligence of the city authorities. The whole heating system was designed in a hyper-centralized way, depending on only two boilers and few main pipelines. Moreover, housing company failed to react on pipe incident properly: the water from the system wasn't immediately dumped to prevent further freezing.

Ukrainian government took massive emergency actions to protect Alchevsk residents from freezing. Engineering teams sent by cities and industrial companies from other regions of the country are gradually restoring heating appliances in every apartment affected. However, as of February 11, dozens of buildings have been still unheated. Hundreds of minor children together with their schoolteachers were evacuated to the resorts and hotels in the warmer regions of Ukraine.

The economic subsequences of the disaster for the city are unclear; also the central government subsidized the total replacement of the heating system in every apartment.