Football League · History

The English Football League (EFL) has comprised 72 professional clubs from England and Wales since the 1995–96 season, split into three divisions of 24: the Championship, League One and League Two. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, it is the oldest football league in the world, and it took its present name in 2016. Its operations centre is in Preston and its commercial office in London.

Foundation in 1888

The idea came from William McGregor, a director of Aston Villa, who wanted to replace the haphazard calendar of friendlies with a fixed list of matches each season. A first meeting took place on 23 March 1888 at Anderton's Hotel in London, and the league was formally created and named on 17 April 1888 at the Royal Hotel in Manchester. Its twelve founder members were Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The first season kicked off on 8 September 1888. Preston North End won it without losing a league match and added the FA Cup, completing English football's first Double. That side became remembered as “The Invincibles”.

From one division to four

Growth was quick. In 1892 the league absorbed the Football Alliance, a rival twelve-club competition, to form the Second Division. After the First World War came a further expansion: a Third Division was created in 1920 from leading Southern League clubs, and in 1921 it became the Third Division South when a Third Division North was added alongside it. The two regional sections ran side by side until 1958, when clubs from the top half of each formed a new national Third Division and those from the bottom halves made up the Fourth Division. That four-tier structure lasted for more than three decades.

Promotion, relegation and the play-offs

For much of the twentieth century, entry to the league depended on a vote of its members, and clubs finishing bottom usually kept their places. The 1986–87 season changed that in two ways. It introduced promotion play-offs, and it brought automatic promotion and relegation between the Fourth Division and the Football Conference. Lincoln City became the first club to drop out by that route, finishing bottom in 1987 and being replaced by Scarborough, the Conference champions under Neil Warnock. Lincoln returned a year later as winners of the 1987–88 Conference. From the end of the 2002–03 season, two clubs have been relegated each year to the fifth tier, the competition that became the National League.

The 1992 breakaway and the new divisions

The biggest upheaval came during the 1991–92 season, when the First Division clubs resigned from the Football League en masse and the Premier League was formed as a separate limited company on 20 February 1992. The Football League kept the remaining three divisions, which were renamed the First, Second and Third Divisions. For the 1995–96 season the league grew from 70 to 72 clubs. From 2004–05 the three divisions took the names Championship, League One and League Two. The Championship winners and runners-up go up automatically to the Premier League, with the third promotion place settled through the play-offs.

Cup competitions and Welsh members

The league also runs its own knockout tournaments. The League Cup, branded the EFL Cup, was established in 1960 and first played in 1960–61, and is open to clubs from the Premier League and all three EFL divisions. In 1983 came the competition later renamed the EFL Trophy, originally reserved for clubs in the lower tiers. Although the league is English, four Welsh clubs compete in it: Cardiff City, Swansea City, Wrexham and Newport County.

The English Football League name

For more than a century the competition was simply the Football League. On 12 November 2015 it announced a rebrand, and from the 2016–17 season it became the English Football League, with the EFL initials carried from then on by its three divisions and its two cup competitions.