Up and down,
Up and down,
Hansen's eyebrows they go up and down,
They go up and they go down, down, down!"
Football in Europe, and Britain in particular, is organized in a series of leagues from which it is possible to be promoted to a higher league by finishing in the top positions one season; similarly, teams are relegated to a lower league by finishing in the bottom positions.
The following description applies to England. Similar structures exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although with fewer professional levels. For the sake of clarity, this article will focus more on the history of Football in England and the Football League in general. For information about the top flight, refer to the English Premier League.
History
The English Football League (EFL), known as "The Football League" before the 2016–17 season, is one of the oldest professional sporting competitions in the world, and was the first such competition for association football when it was founded back in 1888, just a few years after professional football was legalized. Initially it was only made up of one division but a second was quickly added. The league expanded greatly and a third division was added after World War I.Between 1888 and 1992 it was the only professional football league in England. At this time, the FL consisted of 92 clubs in four national divisions called Division One, Division Two, Division Three, and Division Four note . The best teams got promoted to Division One, while the worst were relegated to Division Four, and if they were particularly bad they might get thrown out of the League altogether (although this was rare at that time, and was mostly caused by the clubs going out of business). The clubs that finished at the bottom of Division Four had to apply for re-election to the FL (usually succeeding).
Modern System
In 1992 the 22 clubs in Division One decided that they could do better by themselves, and broke away to form The Premier League, sometimes referred to outside England as the English Premier League, and quickly amassed an eye-watering amount of sponsorship money, which has lately ensured that the Premier League is the world's richest football league and the fifth richest sports league in the world.The remaining Football League renumbered Divisions 2, 3, and 4 as 1, 2, and 3, and later renamed them again to The Championship, League One, and League Two respectively.
Despite the organisational split between the Premier League and the EFL, relegation and promotion still takes place between the Premier League and the Championship — the bottom three teams in the Premier League get relegated to the Championship each year; the top two teams in the Championship, and the winners of the play-offs between the 3rd-6th placed teams in the Championship get promoted to the Premier League. The Championship playoff final is often called "the most valuable football match in the world" as it can be worth between £135 (US$181 million) to the winning club, even if they get relegated from the Premier League the next year (this often happens) - if they don't, it can climb as high as £280 million ($376 million). Even the lowest-placed team in the Premier League receives £94 million in TV rights money (2017-18 season).
Relegated teams receive "parachute payments" from the Premier League for three years - two years if they were immediately relegated back to the Championship - to buffer the shock of having to transfer to a much "poorer" league, and there are now 'solidarity payments', where the Premier League sides essentially pass on a portion of their tv earnings to the lower leagues. Thanks to restructuring and the increasing value of the English Championship, it's not as much of a shock as it used to be - the Championship is now the 6th richest football league in the world, comfortably ahead of all but the traditional 'Big Five' European leagues (France's Ligue 1, the German Bundesliga, Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, and, of course, the Premier League).
However, getting sent down can still cause problems — casual fans don't turn up as much and many of the players decide that they would prefer top-flight action, if only for pride and to compete for international places (the financial aspect is a lesser concern these days, for the above mentioned reasons, but if the club is one run within tight margins, then the maintenance of fancy lifestyles and glamour model girlfriends is also a concern). There is still notable criticism levelled at the gulf between established clubs in the Premiership and the Football League due to the huge difference in revenues, making it very difficult to stay in the top flight for more than one or two seasons, although this has slightly gone down with the newer financial deals in the 2010s which promises more parity than the original financial revenue deal. This wasn't helped by a deal the FL made with ITV Digital (a subscription-based over-the-air digital TV service) during the early-2000s to try and increase their own revenue, only for ITV Digital to go out of business (mostly thanks to idiotic decisions and an inability to compete against Sky; the subscription-less Freeview was started shortly after) and leave several clubs in debt. The effects of this are still being felt today in a few clubs.
Despite usual stigmas about Premier League being dominated only by several established teams, it is not impossible for teams other than the big six teamsnote to try to win the Premier League, as Leicester City famously demonstrated in the 2015-2016 Premier League season.
Outside of the Football League
Since 1987 there has been relegation from what is now League Two to the lower level National League (not to be confused with the U.S. baseball league) and promotion from the National League into the EFL.note Even though the National League is itself a collection of three leagues - the fifth-level National League, and below it National League North and National League South – and there are many regional semi-professional and amateur leagues below the National League, confusingly only teams in the Premiership and the three divisions of the Football League are referred to as "League clubs" or as playing "League football" - all lower-ranked clubs are described as "non-League clubs" or as playing "non-League football". This is perhaps due to the top divisions long having been referred to as "The Football League" and now as the "Premier League" and "English Football League".In fact, all together there are a stonking 21 levels of leagues in the current English system, with each league becoming more regionalised going down the pyramid - from professional clubs to semi-professional to amateur to Sunday-league status. No other league system in the world is as complex as England's, which tells you something about how popular the sport is. There are literally hundreds and thousands of leagues, clubs, cups and players. This means that the pub side that only showed up with 9 players because one has retired to Eastbourne and another is stuck on the A34 is in the same competition as some of the most valuable sports franchises in the world.
Moving up
In theory it is possible — with sufficiently good players, a stadium which meets the standards of the higher league, lots of money and a modicum of luck — for a team from the lowest league to in time be successively promoted to the highest level of the Premier League. In practice, the lowest level team which has made it to the Premiership came from what is now the level of the National League division (Watford FC). However this can bring additional problems with rapid promotion.Wimbledon FC are the classic example of a club's rise up the divisions; they ended up beating Liverpool against all odds in the FA Cup final. However, they didn't have a big enough stadium to attract a steady income and were in an area of London dense with clubs, meaning they lacked a big enough fanbase, Threatened with going out of business, the board sold the club to a Milton Keynes businessman in 2003. This caused them to be relocated to Milton Keynes and renamed the Milton Keynes Dons shortly after, although the practise of "Club Branding" which is more popular in the USA was quickly outlawed after that. Milton Keynes Dons subsequently rebranded itself as a new club formed in 2004, allowing a Spiritual Successor formed by the Wimbledon supporters, AFC Wimbledon, to claim the history of the original club.
The best current example of a team rising through the divisions is the Scottish team, Gretna F.C.; the club was founded in 1946 and for most of the time until 2002 it played in the English non-League divisions (the town of Gretna is very near the English border; it's where young English couples used to run off to to take advantage of Scotland's looser age and parental-consent requirements for marriage). In 2002 Gretna was elected into the Scottish Football League at the third attempt (following the bankruptcy of Airdrieonians F.C.); after three years, Gretna won the SFL Division Three title in 2005, the SFL Division Two title in 2006, and the SFL Division One title in 2007, meaning that in the 2007/08 season they were playing in the Scottish Premier League against the likes of Celtic FC and Rangers FC. This meteoric rise was largely achieved through the ownership of millionaire Brooks Mileson, who pumped money into the club, including the construction of a stadium to Scottish Premier League standards (minimum seating capacity of 6000, despite the entire population of Gretna at the 2001 census being only 2705!). Of course, for every meteoric rise there has to be a meteoric fall - Mileson's illness resulted in his surrendering of ownership, and the club folded and was ejected from the league at the end of the 2007/08 season.
British integration
Gretna is not the only club to have a history of playing in a "foreign" country's league. The English team Berwick Rangers played in the Scottish League until the 2018/19 season when they were relegated, though they currently play in the Scottish Lowland League (the fifth level); the Welsh teams Cardiff City, Newport County, Swansea City, and Wrexham play in the English leaguesnote ; until it went bankrupt in 2003, the English team Oswestry Town played in the League of Wales; the Northern Irish team Derry City plays in (and in 2006 won) the Republic of Ireland's league.In addition to these, two other clubs play on the "foreign" side of their border. The Cymru Premier* club now known as The New Saints merged with Oswestry Town after the latter's bankruptcy, and chose to play at Oswestry's larger ground. The English club Chester (successors to the defunct Chester City), currently in the National League division, play at a ground that straddles the England–Wales border, with its entire pitch in Wales.
Since Football is the most popular sport in the United Kingdom, the wide variety of clubs in the EFL and indeed in the various leagues in Scotland, Wales and Ireland means that football at those levels has become a viable alternative for fans who feel they have been priced out of attending matches in the Premier League due to the increase in prices at that level. Indeed, while it may not have the glamor of the top flight, it can provide a much tighter-knit and more passionate atmosphere, where one can feel closer to the team and fellow supports. Such is the variability of the EFL that glory or failure can be only a few points away, and the prospect of taking a club up the ladder to success has attracted many a football supporter.
