Origins
Formed in Manchester in 1888 with 12 founding members split between a Northern and a Midlands league, it laid the groundwork for today’s sprawling pyramid.
Of the founding members, three currently play in the Premier League (Aston Villa, Everton and Wolves), six compete in the Championship (Blackburn Rovers, Burnley, Derby County, Preston North End, Stoke and West Bromwich Albion), one occupies League One (Bolton Wanderers) and two are currently battling it out at opposite ends of League Two (Notts County and Accrington Stanley, formerly Accrington FC).Currently, the top four tiers of the Pyramid comprise fully professional clubs known as The 92. Since the restructure in 1992, this includes the Premier League and the English Football League (EFL – consisting of The Championship, League One and League Two). Below lies the National League, the last nationwide league and the highest level of the ‘6 Steps’ of non-league football. From here trails a convoluted collection of regionally split tiers continuing all the way down to the tenth tier and beyond. Spanning England, Wales, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, the pyramid features over 140 leagues, nearly 500 divisions and over 1,500 clubs, theoretically allowing anyone to clamber from the doldrums of park football to the indulgence of the Premier League.
The Pyramid in Action
There are numerous clubs’ journeys which embody the principles of the pyramid. Over decades, Wigan Athletic climbed from the eighth tier to the Premier League, going on to win the FA Cup 2013. Similarly, Wimbledon FC transitioned from non-league to the Football League in 1977, gaining promotion to the First Division in 1986 before winning the FA Cup in 1988. After the club was relocated to Milton Keynes in 2003, AFC Wimbledon, a phoenix club created by the Wimbledon faithful, set off on this journey once again, climbing from the Ninth to the third tier in just over a decade.
Famously it took Leicester less than a decade to go from League One to winning the Premier League, whilst Swansea City, Southampton and Fulham all spent similar amounts of time climbing from the lower echelons of the EFL to qualifying for Europe. Even over the last few years, Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton have put their lower league heritage to one side in order to establish themselves as some of the most exciting clubs in the top tier.
A true icon of the football pyramid is Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu, who played at every level as Luton rose from the National League to the Premier League, becoming the first player in history to do this with the same team.
In recent years, clubs like Salford City, Forest Green Rovers and Macclesfield FC have made headlines with their quests to travel up the leagues. The most famous of these journeys must be Hollywood’s Wrexham, causing Americans to flock to North Wales to witness a romance impossible in their own leagues.
For Every Fairytale, There is Heartbreak
The pyramid’s beauty lies in promotion, however what creates this ecstasy for a football fan is the corresponding history of relegation. The EFL is littered with clubs who formerly earned their stripes at the very top of English football. No club has spent its entire existence in the topflight (although Everton and Arsenal come close). Even giants like Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City have spent time further down the Football League. Liverpool needed Bill Shankly to return them to glory, and Manchester City were playing in the third tier just before the turn of the century, only to win their first Premier League in 2012.
Dragons in the Lion’s Den
By 1912, Cardiff City, Swansea Town (now City), Newport County and Wrexham had all joined the English system due to the absence of a national Welsh league. When the League of Wales (now Cymru Premiership) was finally created in 1992, the FAW allowed all the Welsh clubs playing in the EFL at the time (Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham) to remain in the English League system. The other eight Welsh clubs, who had begun playing competitive football in England and were currently competing in the lower leagues, were forced to return by threat of not being able to play home games in Wales. This stipulation was overruled in court by Newport County, however today Merthyr Town is the only Welsh club currently playing their football in the lower tiers of English football, with the others heading back across the border, and Swansea, Cardiff, Newport and Wrexham plying their trade in the EFL. Likewise, lacking national leagues of their own is the reason why clubs from Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man also play in the ‘English’ pyramid.
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