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In 1973 and 1976, Dnepr reached the semi-finals of the USSR Cup. In 1978, the team was relegated to the lower league for two years. Their next return to the top flight was not as inviting as their first one and the team languished at the bottom of the table for several years. In the following years, the governing body of the team hired new promising coaches – ''Volodymyr Yemets'' and ''Hennadiy Zhizdik''. After those changes, ''Dnepr'' became a strong contender for the [[Soviet Top League|Soviet championship]] winning it twice: once with Yemets and Zhizdik in 1983, and another one with [[Evgeny Kucherevsky|Yevhen Kucherevsky]] in 1988. Also, in 1989 ''Dnepr'' became the first professional football club in the Soviet Union. During those years, the team featured many notable players such as [[Oleg Protasov]], [[Hennadiy Lytovchenko]], [[Oleksiy Cherednyk]] and [[Oleh Taran]].
===Ukrainian
Just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1989 the club was transformed into a professional football club instead of the Soviet "team of masters", a process through which all Soviet teams of masters went through. The club joined the [[Football Federation of Ukraine|football federation of the native country]] and remained one of the top contenders in the newly formed [[Ukrainian Premier League]]. The team received a silver medal in 1993, as well as the bronze in 1992, 1995, 1996, 2001 and 2004. The team also reached the [[Ukrainian Cup]] finals in 1995, 1997 and 2004, losing all three to [[FC Shakhtar Donetsk|Shakhtar Donetsk]]. In the beginning of the 1990s the control of the club took over a native of [[Rivne]] [[Ihor Bakai]] with his "Respublika" corporation who earlier in the 1980s was governor of the [[SKA Karpaty Lviv]] training center, part of the [[Carpathian Military District]].<ref name=stange>[https://web.archive.org/web/20170714065501/http://football.ua/ownshirt/events/176015-vy-popaly-v-shtangu.html "Вы попали в штангу"]. football.ua (archived version). 9 September 2012</ref> Bakai who invited [[Bernd Stange]] to Dnipro became first who hired foreign manager to head the former Soviet club.<ref name=stange/> At that time Bakai was a member of the [[Verkhovna Rada]] (Ukrainian parliament) and a chairman of the Intergaz corporation which had exclusive rights of importing gas to Ukraine from [[Turkmenistan]] and in Ukraine was unofficially referred to as the "Gaz King".<ref name=stange/> The experience of the former manager of [[East Germany national football team]] [[Bernd Stange]] in [[Dnipro]] was described in the biographic book that was published in Germany in 2004 "Trainer zwischen den Welten. Bernd Stange" (Coach between the Worlds. Bernd Stange).<ref>[https://www.tagesspiegel.de/potsdam/potsdam-kultur/trainer-zwischen-den-welten-7730524.html Kultur: Trainer zwischen den Welten]. www.tagesspiegel.de. 17 April 2004</ref>
During the summer of 1996 Dnipro initiated "repositioning" of its best players along with Bernd Stange to CSKA-Borysfen which in the previous season placed 4th just behind Dnipro.<ref name=stange/> Among those players were [[Oleksandr Yevtushok]], [[Viktor Skrypnyk]], [[Serhiy Kovalets]], [[Serhiy Mizin]], [[Andriy Polunin]], [[Serhiy Nahornyak]], [[Volodymyr Sharan]], [[Oleksandr Palyanytsya]].<ref name=stange/> However, just few day before the start of the [[1996–97 Ukrainian Premier League|1996–97]] season in Ukrainian Vyshcha Liha (Higher League), on the joint session of the Professional Football League (PFL) and the Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU), [[FC Arsenal Kyiv|CSKA-Borysfen]] was taken away from its original owners and handed over to Mikhail Grinshpon ("Kiev-Donbass")<ref name=stange/> connected with [[Semion Mogilevich]].<ref>[https://kompromat1.press/articles/104682-otkupitcja_li_grinshpon_ot_nabu Откупится ли Гриншпон от НАБУ?]. kompromat1.press</ref> With the transfer of Dnipro players falling completely through, players ended up in danger of missing a season.<ref name=stange/>
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