• Event date: 10.12.2008
• Time: 20:45

The 2009 UEFA Champions League Final will be the 54th final of the UEFA Champions League football tournament and the 17th final under the current format. The final will be played at the 82,000 capacity Stadio Olimpico in Rome, the home of A.S. Roma and S.S. Lazio, on 27 May 2009.

Participants:

• Real Madrid
• F.C. Zenith Saint - Petersburg

Event place:

• Estadio Santiago Bernabeu

• F.C. Zenith Saint - Petersburg

Zenit Football Club traces its history back to May 1925, when a football team was established at the Leningrad Metal Works named after Stalin. In its early formative years, the team mainly played at local tournaments. In 1930, once a steady line-up was in place, the LMW team took part in the Leningrad city championship for the first time.

Shortly before playoffs started for the 1936 club championship, the LMW team was renamed “Stalinets”.

During the early USSR championships, Stalinets played in Group B (first league) and did not make it to Group A (premier league) until 1938. In 1939, Stalinets reached the National Cup finals, put up stiff resistance to Moscow’s Spartak, but lost. Spartak was invincible in those years.

A year later, in 1940, the team acquired the name we know it by: Zenit.

Before the beginning of the Russia Championship 2005 campaign football experts placed FC Zenit in line with the leading Russian clubs and considered it to be one of the candidates for the champion’s title. In the Russia Cup the team advanced to the semi-finals again, has shown a series of 19 matches without defeat, but wasn’t lucky at the end of the Championship, having occupied the 6th place. However, for the first time in the club history FС Zenit got into the play-off stage and further in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup.

Before the start of 2006 campaign "Gazprom" became the main shareholder of FC Zenit joint-stock company. New administration promised to strengthen the team and, despite all misfortunes, rejoice the supporters with the new achievements in the domestic and international matches.

Lev Burchalkin played the most USSR Championships games (400) in Zenit history. He also scored the most goals: 78. Anatoliy Korotkov is famous for having scored as many as 22 goals in a single championship in 1950.

At different points in its history, Zenit has been coached by: Petr Filippov, Konstantin Egorov, Konstantin Lemeshev, Mikhail Butusov, Ivan Talanov, Georgiy Lasin, Vladimir Lemeshev, Nikolay Lukshinov, Arkadiy Alov, Georgiy Zharkov, Gennadiy Bondarenko, Evgeniy Eliseyev, Valentin Fedorov, Artem Falian, Evgeniy Gorianskiy, German Zonin, Yuriy Morozov, Pavel Sadyrin, Vladimir Golubev, Stanislav Zavidonov, Anatoliy Konkov, Viacheslav Bulavin, Viacheslav Melnikov, Anatoliy Byshovets, Anatoliy Davydov, Yuriy Morozov, Mikhail Birukov, Boris Rapoport and Vlastimil Petrjela. At present Zenit coach is Dick Advocaat.