From Grassroots to Glory: Glancing through England’s football pyramid:

Five intense working days filled with blood, sweat and tears in which each day feels like a constant relegation battle in our lives; rewarded only by the weekend; Saturday to be precise. A chance to lose yourself in the emotions away from the working world, to escape your mind into the dimension of football. Cheering your local club with a sausage roll or burger, a cup of tea or hot chocolate in the cold, rain lashing down, a capacity of fans you could quite possibly count on your two hands. The final whistle blows with the result ending in a win, loss or draw, every supporter you managed to count rushing out of the stands as quickly as they can spell the word. You realise that by the time you reach home on the speed of a walking distance mile, hanging your clothes on a peg ready to be dried on the radiator and desperately wanting a towel to dry your hair, your hear the roaring crowd of your favourite team ready to face their Premier League opponents for three points. Don’t you see, different worlds, yet both part of the same game. Therefore to completely glance through England’s football pyramid, understanding that football on all levels all play on the same grass, it is important to consider the roots of where it all began.

English Football or Football in England began in 1863, Victorian England precisely, “when a group of clubs met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London, approximately a few feet away from Holborn Underground station for the purpose of standardising and establishing the rules and regulations of the game. One of the clubs in that meeting was Barnes F.C and their representative was a man named Ebenezer Morley who believed that football needed a set of rules just like Cricket.” Essentially, England’s football governing body ‘the FA’ or the Football Association was formed in that year and Morley ensured his influence in the introduction and implementation of these rules for the first time between Barnes F.C and Richmond on the 19^{th of} December in 1863 which ended in a goalless draw but started the discussion of rules and regulations in football in its entirety for the first time. After the formation of the Football Association, English football now had rules and regulations for its players to follow but not everyone adopted them in the correct way.

The world’s “Amendments and developments in the various codes followed as the game evolved, until the Sheffield Association ultimately adopted The FA’s codified laws in 1877.” This demonstrated that different regions across the country had their own styles of play and the significance of the FA codifying its laws in 1877 enabled football to unite its people under a single rulebook but also revolutionised industrial Britain in factory towns and mining communities; with workers forming their own teams that represented their workplaces, their local pubs and churches whilst uniting communities through the shared rules and laws and love for the beautiful game. Eight years later, the FA voted to legalise professionalism, introducing the ability for football clubs to pay their players, inspiring the establishment of the renowned Football League of 1888; led by the director of Aston Villa Football Club William McGregor, proposing the introduction of a regular competition to ensure players benefitted from the generated income from the legalisation of professionalism by the FA three years prior; and the regularity of fixtures involving the best clubs and upon the founding members of the Football League includes some of the most famous football teams that play in England’s top flight today including Aston Villa, Everton, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Preston North End who finished as the inaugural champions of the newly-formed league, finishing unbeaten and earning the nickname ‘The Invincibles’, a term now associated with Arsene Wenger’s 2003-04 Arsenal squad who had won England’s most coveted trophy “The Premier League” with “26 victories and 12 draws across a 38-match campaign.

England's football Pyramid

Premier League (Level 1)

The summit of English football

20 clubs compete for the title each season

The bottom three teams are relegated to the Championship

EFL—Championship, League One, Two (Levels 2-4)

Championship: 24 teams; top two promoted, next four enter play-offs

League One and Two: Similar promotion/ relegation systems. Clubs here are professional but often face financial difficulties when they get relegated

National League (Level 5) & Regional Leagues (Levels 6-11)

Step 1: National League (semi-professional & professional mix).

Step 2: North/South divisions, followed by county and regional leagues

Levels increase in number as you go down the pyramid , with thousands of amateur and semi-professional clubs.

On a concluding note, In England, Football is not just a game, it is a living, breathing pyramid, built on dreams of  the ‘impossible’. A pyramid that turns Impossible into ‘I’m possible’. Every football fan, young and old one day dreams his local club might climb all the way to becoming a global name in the sport of football.

Football pyramid down to step 4