Portal:English football/Selected competition

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The Premier League (officially known as the Barclays Premier League for sponsorship reasons, colloquially known as The Premiership), is an English professional league for football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. The Premier League is currently contested by 20 clubs, operating a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League. Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 games each.

The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 and the first games were played on 15 August that year, following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League to take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal; The Football League had served as England and Wales' primary football competition since 1888.

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The Football League is a league competition featuring professional football clubs from England and Wales, and is the oldest such competition in world football. Its 72 clubs are evenly divided into three divisions, The Championship, League One, and League Two. Promotion and relegation between these divisions is a central feature of the League and is further extended to allow the top Championship clubs to exchange places with the lowest placed clubs in the Premier League, and the bottom clubs of League Two to switch with the top clubs of the Football Conference, thus integrating the League into the English football league system. Although primarily a competition for English clubs, three clubs from Wales also take part.

The Football League is also the name of the governing body of the league competition and this body also organises two knockout cup competitions, the Football League Cup and the Football League Trophy.

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The Football Conference is a football league at the top of the National League System of non-League football in England. Conference National is the highest of the three divisions within the Football Conference, with Conference North and Conference South serving as regional feeders one step down. The Football Conference consisted of only one division up until 2004, but expanded as part of an extensive restructuring of the National League System which took effect beginning with the 2004-05 season.

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The Northern Premier League, known in recent years as the UniBond League under a title sponsorship contract, is one of the regional English football leagues which sits directly below the Football Conference. Due to restructuring, from 2005 onwards its champions have been promoted to the Conference North division rather than the Conference National as was previously the case.

The Northern Premier League was founded in 1968, decades after the other two leagues at what is now the seventh tier of the English football league system, the Southern League and Isthmian League. At that time it was considered to share the fifth tier with these leagues as well as the long-established Northern League.

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The Southern Football League is an English football competition featuring semi-professional and amateur clubs from the South West, South Central and Midlands of England. For historical reasons the Welsh club Merthyr Tydfil also currently play in the Southern League.

The structure of the Southern League has changed several times since its formation in 1894, and currently there are 65 clubs which are divided into three divisions. The Premier Division is at Level 3 of the National League System, and is a feeder division to Conference South. Feeding the Premier Division are two regional divisions, known as Division One Midlands and Division One South & West, which are at Level 4 of the system. These divisions are in turn fed by various regional leagues. For sponsorship reasons the Southern League is currently known as the British Gas Business Football League.

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The Isthmian League is a regional football league covering London and South East England. It is more commonly known by the name of its official title sponsor as the Ryman League, and has in previous years been variously known (in chronological order) as the Rothmans Isthmian League, Berger Isthmian League, Servowarm Isthmian League, Vauxhall-Opel League, Vauxhall League, Diadora League and ICIS League.

The league was founded in 1905, and was strongly dedicated to amateurism. The champions did not even receive a trophy, league policy being that the honour sufficed. Teams less able to compete financially thus gravitated to it rather than the Southern League, while those with ambition and money would move in the opposite direction.

Although the league established itself as one of the strongest leagues in the country, routinely providing the winners of the FA Amateur Cup, it was still seen as being at a lower level than the Southern League and Northern Premier League which were the top regional semi-professional leagues.

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The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football, run by and named after The Football Association. The name "FA Cup" refers to the English men's tournament. The equivalent competition for women's teams is the FA Women's Cup.

The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world, commencing in the 1871-72 season. Because it involves clubs of all standards playing against each other there is the possibility for "minnows" from the lower divisions to become "giant-killers" by eliminating top clubs from the tournament, although lower division teams rarely reach the final. A record 762 teams were accepted into the FA Cup in 2011-12, which is to date, the most amount of entrants. In comparison, the League Cup can involve only the 72 members of The Football League (which organises the competition) and the 20 teams in the Premiership for a total of 92 eligible teams. The team who have won the most FA Cups throughout the competition's history is Arsenal, having won it on 14 occasions. Manchester United are second on the list on Cup wins on 13 and hold the most appearances in the final, reaching the showpiece event 22 times, but they hold the most defeats there with 9. Everton and Chelsea have both lost one less, but the latter became the first team to lose three successive final appearances (2020, 2021, and 2022).

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The Football League Cup, commonly known as the League Cup, is an English football competition. Like the FA Cup, it is played on a knockout (single elimination) basis, but unlike the FA Cup, where almost 700 or more teams enter through the preliminaries, only the 92 professinal league clubs —the 20 clubs of the Premiership, and the 72 clubs of The Football League — participate in the competition. Another difference from the FA Cup is that the semi-finals are played over two legs. Currently, apart from the final, if the match ends in 90 minutes with the scores level, the tie would be decided via penalties immediately. Back then, the winners would qualify for the UEFA Cup (Now named the Europa League), if they have not qualified for European competition in some other way. The same format applies, but the winners now would qualify for the UEFA Conference League. If the winner qualifies for the Champions League, the Conference League spot is given to the team that finishes highest in the Premiership, that has not already qualified for a European competition.

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The Football Association Community Shield (formerly the Charity Shield) is an English association football trophy contested in an annual match between the current champions of England (currently the Premiership) and the winners of the FA Cup. It is equivalent to the Super Cups found in many countries. If a team wins The Double (both the league and the FA Cup), then the Double winner plays the runner-up. The match is contested at the beginning of the following season, and has traditionally been played at Wembley Stadium, although it was played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales while Wembley has been being rebuilt. The newly built Wembley held the 2007 edition and every other Community Shield since, but there has been only two finals that weren't played there. In 2012, Villa Park (Home of Aston Villa) filled in as the host as Wembley hosted the final of the 2012 Olympic football tournament on the same weekend as the proposed date for the Community Shield, and in 2022, the King Power Stadium (Home of Leicester City) stood in as the replacement venue with Wembley hosting the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 final. This meant that Leicester became the first club to host this fixture more than once aside from Wembley.

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The Football League Trophy is the generic name of an English football competition for clubs in the two lower divisions of The Football League and, in some seasons, the leading sides in the Conference National. It was originally called the Associate Members' Cup (an anachronism as there is now no distinction between full and associate membership of the Football League).

The official name is periodically changed to match changes in sponsors and is now the Johnstone's Paint Trophy (for three years from 2006), the common nickname amongst the fans for the cup during this period is the "Paint Pot Trophy" or "Paint Pot Cup".

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Key's Park, home of 2004 champions Hednesford Town

The Football Association Challenge Trophy is an English football competition for clubs playing in levels 5-8 of the English football league system (steps 1-4 of the National League System), which currently covers the three divisions of the Football Conference along with the Southern League, Isthmian League, and Northern Premier League. Clubs in lower levels of the National League System play in the FA Vase.

It was created by the Football Association in 1969 for semi-professional teams, to complement the existing FA Amateur Cup. When the latter was abolished in 1974, the leading amateur teams joined the Trophy. The final was traditionally held at the old Wembley Stadium, but was moved to Villa Park during Wembley's redevelopment. The 2005-06 final was held at Upton Park, London.

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The Conference League Cup is the generic name of an English football competition, open to clubs playing in levels 5 or 6 of the English football league system, (steps 1 and 2 of the National League System), which covers the three Football Conference divisions.

The Conference League Cup was formed for the inaugural season of the Football Conference, in 1979–80 and existed for twenty-two seasons before being axed at the end of the 2000–01 season. It was briefly re-formed for the 2004–05 season, but it was again agreed not to renew the competition for the next season. With the transfer of sponsorship of the Conference to Blue Square for the start of the 2007–08 season two seasons later, the re-introduction of the competition was announced, scheduled to commence that very year.

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The Football Association Challenge Vase is an annual football competition for teams playing in the lower regional leagues of England. Currently over 400 teams compete each season, with two qualifying rounds preceding the six proper rounds, semi-finals and final.

Until 1974, football players were either professionals or amateurs. Professionals were paid to play by their clubs, and the only cup competitions such clubs were allowed to enter were the FA Cup and, for clubs outside The Football League, the FA Trophy. Amateurs, on the other hand, did not get paid by their clubs, and such clubs had their own cup competition, the FA Amateur Cup.

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Portal:English football/Selected competition/14 The FA National League System Cup is a football competition run by The Football Association. It was created in the 2003-04 season to provide an English representative in the UEFA Regions' Cup.

In previous Regions' Cups, the FA had nominated a team to take part; in the 2002-03 season it was a Kent County League XI. UEFA decreed that in the future all Regions' Cup entrants must have won a national competition, and so the NLS Cup was formed.

The cup is contested by representative sides from leagues at level 7 of the National League System with a few other leagues permitted by the FA. That is roughly at the county level or eleventh overall tier of the English football league system. The first final was held on May 8, 2004, and was won by the Mid Cheshire League, who beat the Cambridgeshire County League 2-0.

The selected competition box on the portal chooses one of the following at random when displaying the page. Follow the instructions below for adding a new competition to the list.

Usage

Competitions in English football can be added directly to this list without nomination.

Template

{{Portal:English football/Selected competition/Layout
  |image=
  |size=
  |caption=
  |text=
  |link=
}}<noinclude>
[[Category:English football portal selected competitions|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude>

Note that the prefix Image: is not required when using this template, also - the template will auto-wikilink the article entered in the link= field. Further information on this template can be found at Portal:English football/Selected competition/Layout.

To add a new article

1. Click on the next successive empty entry or red link from this page.
2. Paste the above layout template if it isn't already there.
3. Write three or four paragraphs in the text field using information from the selected competition, you may find it useful to examine the existing entries for an idea of the length required.
4. Ensure the main name of the competition is in bold and linked and add this same article to the link field.
5. Add a free image and caption. (VERY important)
6. Preview the page, check that the image size is correct. If the image is too big, add 100px to the size field.
7. Save the page.
8. Go to the main Portal:English football page.
9. Click on edit page.
10. Update "max=" to its new total for the {{Random portal component}} on the main page. The line which is edited is this one: {{Random portal component|max=4|header=Selected competition|subpage=Selected article}} Make sure that "max=" is the same numerical value as the article entry added above (i.e. if you added article 43, then max=43)