Newbie American here.

[Oliver555]

I am starting to get into your football and figured I'd start with English soccer. I watched Sunderland Til I die and All or nothing. Totenham Spurs. Kinda confused about the terms. I see a lot of Championships. Some good some bad. I'm guessing Derbie is a rivalry. There are two cups, The top 4 teams get into a Championship league and the next four get into another league. I think I get relegation. Are there articles that explain anything more clearly you can recommend?

 

[oakroader]

And these folks are entitled to carry guns??

 

[Oliver555]

And these folks are entitled to carry guns??

Thanks for the helpful answer.

 

[Son of Cod]

Derbie is indeed a rivalry but it's also a really dull club in the East Midlands.

And yep, you're right the top four in the top division go into a tournament called the Champions League which includes loads of clubs from all over Europe most of which aren't actually champions of anything.

English football league system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BarrieOwl]

I am starting to get into your football and figured I'd start with English soccer. I watched Sunderland Til I die and All or nothing. Totenham Spurs. Kinda confused about the terms. I see a lot of Championships. Some good some bad. I'm guessing Derbie is a rivalry. There are two cups, The top 4 teams get into a Championship league and the next four get into another league. I think I get relegation. Are there articles that explain anything more clearly you can recommend?

As an outsider who is used to the system in US sports our game can be very difficult to grasp to begin with.

Generally the clubs making up our leagues are teams born in the local community with some being founded in the mid 1800s. There isn't a closed competition in theory so the big clubs can be relegated if they don't perform and clubs that were once non league can make the top division if they are a success.

We aren't keen on franchises and even almost 20 years on since the MK Dons story they still find themselves utterly disliked by a fair majority of fans.

The best team over 38/46 games are champions, this usually means they are moved up to the next league.

 

[Boletus Edulis]

Welcome. Most of our teams have been around for a hundred years or more so there are a lot of quaint traditions, many of which are very localised and steeped in regional history. Spurs comes from their full name Tottenham Hotspur. A derby is indeed a rival game between two teams. Usually this is geographical based, so Manchester City (or we would say Man City) and Manchester United. Confusingly there is a team called Derby County because there is a place called Derby in the midlands. as noted above we have very few franchises unlike say the NFL. There are a lot of teams that are only a few miles apart.

Professional football or footie in England has four leagues. For a very long time they were known as the First Division, Second Division and so on. For reasons that are far too complex to go into they are now know as the Premier League (though this keeps changing exactly nomenculture), Championship, League 1 and League 2. There is also a level below this call the National League to which two clubs get promoted each year to and from League 2. Some teams in the National League are full time professionals and some are part time.

As noted the top four in the Premier League got into the Championd League of the best European teams. They play an initial group stage of, I think six games home and away. Then the top ones go to the knock out stage.

There are also some ‘lesser‘ European competitions that three or more premier league teams may get into. there are also some England based cups, the best known of which is the FA cups, which has very early rounds where small amateur clubs can enter. each year a few get to the proper stages where the ’big boys’ get involved.

The way football is structures is Byzantine and I won’t go into it unless you want to.
You will see that my main team is Plymouth Argyle because that is where I live now. They have never played in the top league whatever it has been called. We currently play in League 1, so the third level. Our club badge is of the Mayflower and sometimes we are known as the Pilgrims, though we tend to use Argyle, Argo or the Greens (we play in green). Our owner is Plymouth educated but lives in the US (near philly I think).

West Ham United, the hammers, is my other team be use that was close to where I was brought up. West Ham won the World Cup in 1966.

Now if this all sounds complicated, don’t get into cricket!!!

of course I may be whooshed in which case I have had a pleasant time eating my pastie and typing this.