F.A. The Premier League or Football Association Premier League is a professional football league competition in England which is the highest level club competition in England. Currently, it has sponsorship support from Barclays Bank so its official name becomes Barclays Premier League. Outside Great Britain, it is known as the English Premier League.
Prior to the creation of the Premier League in 1992, the highest level of professional football league competition in England was the First Division Football League. Towards the end of the 1991–92 season, several of the top football clubs split from the football league after making lucrative deals with television stations. On February 20, 1992 a new competition format was created with the name FA Premier League with 22 members in the first season.
This league is the most followed domestic competition, with a total attendance of supporters in all its matches reaching up to 14 million and more than 600 million spectators from all over the world.
The Background Story of the English Premier League
Although throughout the 1970s and early 1980s several English clubs were successful in European competition, the late 1980s marked the low point of English football. Destroyed stadiums, lack of facilities for supporters, and more hooliganism resulted in English clubs being banned from European competition for five years after the Heysel Tragedy in 1985.
Due to this ban, it resulted in a decrease in the number of spectators and fans of the Premier League at that time. Until the turn of 1990 the downward trend began to recover, as the England National Team made it to the semi-finals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup. UEFA, the European football’s Association, finally lifted the five-year ban for English clubs from European competition in 1990. Eventually Manchester United lifted the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991. Finally, the Taylor Report on Stadium Safety Standards, which proposed the cost of upgrading the stadium to become a full-seater stadium, was published in January 1991.
The Creation
At the close of the 1991–92 season, a proposal to form a new league was made that would bring the most money into the game as a whole. The founding member agreement signed on 17 July 1991 by the top 5 clubs, establishes the basic principles for governing the FA Premier League.
The creation of this new top division will have its own commercial authority apart from the English Football Association (FA) and The Football League, as well as granting the FA Premier League a license to offer its own broadcast rights and sponsorship deals. The opinion given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe.
The League’s Competition
A total of 20 clubs compete in the English Premier League. For each season, each club plays against each other twice. Once in their stadium (home stadium) and once again in the opponent’s place. A total of 38 games for each club makes a total of 380 matches in the Premier League.
At the end of each season, the bottom three clubs are relegated and the top four clubs enter the Champions League competition for the Champions Cup. The top 3 soccer picks and parlays teams will enter EUCL automatically, while the 4th place goes through the play-off process. Clubs in 5th place in the major leagues will enter the competition for the UEFA Cup. Clubs in 6th and 7th place may also enter the UEFA Cup competition depending on the situation of the other two domestic competitions.
Meanwhile, clubs who are 18-20 will be relegated to the Championship Division and will be replaced by clubs ranked 1-2 from the Championship Division who are automatically promoted and clubs ranked 3-6 from the Championship Division who fight for one remaining ticket.
