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5 unusual facts about Riga Vanderer


FK ASK

In 1932 ASK won its first Virsliga title (in a golden match against Riga Vanderer).

Riga Vanderer

Its footballers joined different newly founded clubs of the Soviet system: RDKA Riga (Jānis Bebris), FK Dinamo Riga (Ādolfs Sīmanis), Spartaks Rīga (Alberts Šeibelis), RGK Riga (Šeino).

Despite having lost Arvīds Jurgens to its main rivals ASK Riga (but at the same time it had gained national team forward Alberts Šeibelis from RFK) that year Vanderers finished with the same amount of points as ASK.

As the majority of the Vanderer footballers in its first squad came from RFK, there started a deep rivalry between these two clubs and several of their matches ended in violence.

Vanderer could not better its 1932 result over the years, yet it repeated the second place finish in 1934, but the margin between Vanderer and the title winners RFK was big.


Aleksandrs Ābrams

At the end of the 1927 season Ābrams was one of several RFK main squad footballers (together with Arvīds Jurgens, Voldemārs Plade, Česlavs Stančiks and others) to leave the team for the newly founded Riga Vanderer club which became a strong rival for RFK in the following years (RFK was usually the stronger side on field, but there was always a high tension surrounding the derby between these two sides).

Česlavs Stančiks

In 1928 Stančiks joined the newly founded RFK off shot and future rivals Riga Vanderer, for which he played until 1932, missing his fourth Latvian title in a gold medal match against ASK Riga in his match with Vanderer.

Harijs Fogelis

With RFK he played just one season after which he moved to the newly founded Riga Vanderer along several much more popular RFK footballers, such as Arvīds Jurgens, Voldemārs Plade and Česlavs Stančiks, and over two seasons the new club earned promotion to the Latvian Higher League.

Vaclavs Borduško

As after the Kārlis Ulmanis coup of 15 May 1934 all social democrat organisations were banned, SSS was disbanded and Borduško moved to Riga Vanderer.


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