won the league and became champions for the first time in their history. During the season, the average home attendance was 5,289 spectators, which is still a record . The final match of the season was played on 1 June 1997 against Beltinci in front of 14,000 spectators, which is also a joint-record of the Slovenian top division. In that season Maribor also won the 1996–97 Slovenian Cup, thus winning the domestic double, a feat they repeated in the 1998–99 season. After their first title in 1996–97, Maribor went on to win six more titles, bringing their total number to seven consecutive titles by 2003. In the 1999–2000 season, the club, led by head coach Bojan Prašnikar, defeated Genk and Lyon in the qualifying rounds of the 1999–2000 UEFA Champions League and thus qualified for the group stage of the competition for the first time. Maribor were drawn into the group with Dynamo Kyiv, Bayer Leverkusen, and Lazio. They finished in last place with four points out of six games. Financial difficulties (2004–2008) The 2003–04 Slovenian Cup was the last trophy won by Maribor before the club declined for several years. Between 2004 and 2007, the club was plagued by major financial difficulties, and even came close to being disbanded at one point. Due to their large debts, which at one point amounted to over €3 million, the club could not afford to buy new players. As a result, the first team at the time consisted mostly of youth players mixed with a couple of foreign players brought to the club on free transfers. In the autumn of 2006, the leadership of the club changed, and it was not until January 2011 that the club announced that the debt had been paid in full. During this period, Maribor never finished higher than third in the league, and were runners-up of the Slovenian Cup twice, in 2007 and 2008. They were, however, one of the eleven winners of the 2006 UEFA Intertoto Cup, in which they defeated Spanish side Villarreal 3–2 on aggregate in the final round, only a couple of months after Villareal had played in the semi-final of the UEFA Champions League. Zlatko Zahovič's golden era (2008–2020) In July 2007, Maribor appointed former Slovenian international Zlatko Zahovič as the club's sporting director, which marked the beginning of the golden era of the club. In May 2008, Maribor played their