Fotbal Club Zaria Bălți, commonly known as Zaria Bălți or simply as Zaria, is a Moldovan football club based in Bălți, currently playing in the Divizia Națională. Between 1992 and 2014 the team was known as Olimpia Bălți.
History
Old logo
Football professional clubs existed in Bălți before 1984 playing in the Ukrainian Class B (Soviet lower division of football competitions). Among those clubs was FC Piscevic Bălți (originally as FC Stroiindustriya). In 1966 Stroiindustriya Bălți became a champion of the Moldavian SSR and was admitted to the Class B competitions. Following liquidation of the Class B competitions in 1970, FC Piscevik disappeared.
The club was founded in 1984 as FC Zarya (Russian: ФК Заря Бельцы), and in 1991, when Moldova gained its independence, the club was renamed to FC Olimpia Bălți. In July 2014 it was decided to return to the old name - FC Zaria Bălți.
The Zaria gained worldwide notoriety in December 2009 for putting an online bid through which the winner would awarded a one-year contract as a player with the club.[1] The winner was a Brazilian businessman who had a brief career as a footballer in his native country. Nevertheless, the winning bidder declined the position stating that, since he never paid the application fee, he assumed his bid would not be taken into account.[2] In April 2010 the club called for a new bidding round.[3] The winner was never announced, though.
Khazar Lankaran
Dinamo București
Videoton
Sarajevo
Apollon Limassol
Górnik Zabrze
Vlad Goian
Ivan Daniliants (1984–1986)
Mykhailo Dunets (2007)
Igor Turcanu
Albert Solomonov (Oct 1, 2012 – Dec 31, 2012)
