Radnički NišFK Radnički Niš are a club that, in the 1981/82 season, came closer than any other Serbian side in history to reaching the UEFA Cup final, advancing to the semi-finals of the competition. The club was founded on 24 April 1923 in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with one of its founders being the communist activist Miloš Marković, who two years later also established the club Sloboda Užice. The name Radnički - literally the labourers' club - reflected the club's strong ties to the labour movement in the first half of the twentieth century, which, following the proclamation of the royal dictatorship in 1929, forced the club's leadership to temporarily change its name to Građanski, out of fear of persecution against left-wing activists.
Radnički Niš were among the most stable clubs in the history of the former Yugoslavia, spending a total of twenty-nine seasons in the Yugoslav First League, with their best results being two third-place finishes, in 1980 and 1981. The high point of the club's history, however, came during the 1981/82 UEFA Cup campaign. After eliminating opponents including Austria's LASK Linz, Radnički reached the semi-finals, where they faced West Germany's Hamburger SV. On 7 April 1982, at their own Čair Stadium in front of twenty-two thousand supporters, the Niš side beat the Germans 2-1 thanks to goals from Beganović and Obradović. In the return leg in Hamburg, however, Radnički lost 1-5, going out of a competition that was ultimately won by Sweden's IFK Göteborg. The club also won the regional Balkans Cup in 1975, reaching another final in that competition in 1989.
Today, Radnički Niš, known as the Real sa Nišave (Real of the Nišava), compete in the Serbian SuperLiga, which they returned to in 2012, recording their best post-war results with a third-place finish in 2018 and a runners-up finish the following year. It is worth distinguishing the club from the similarly named Radnički 1923 of Kragujevac - the two sides share only the part of their name reflecting their common working-class roots. The Niš side play their home matches at Čair Stadium, which can hold more than eighteen thousand spectators.
