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The English football league system is a series of interconnected leagues for club football in England (though for historical reasons - namely that the league system was originally intended to be UK-wide - a small number of Welsh clubs also compete).
Structure
At the top is the FA Premier League, a single-division league of 20 clubs. Below is The Football League, which is divided into three divisions of 24 clubs. Below that is the Football Conference, which contains a national division of 22 clubs followed by divisions covering the north and south of England (and parts of Wales), again with 22 clubs each.
Under that are three regional leagues, each associated different geographical area (though they often overlap): the Northern Premier League covers the north of England; the Southern League covers the south of England (except the South East), the Midlands and parts of Wales and the Isthmian League covers the South East. Each of these leagues has a Premier Division, with a First Division below (except the Southern League, which has two parallel ones).
Only the Isthmian league has a Second Division, which is on the same level as the top divisions of the North West Counties Football League, the Northern Counties East Football League, the Northern League, the Western Football League, the Wessex League, the Sussex County Football League, the Hellenic Football League, the Midland Football Alliance, the United Counties Football League, the Eastern Counties Football League, the Kent League, the Spartan South Midlands Football League, the Combined Counties Football League and the Essex Senior Football League. In the future, it is planned to reduce these fifteen divisions to twelve (three below each of the divisions above them).
Each of these leagues has a different divisional set up, but they all have one thing in common: there are yet more leagues below them, each covering smaller and smaller geographical levels. In some areas, there are more than twenty levels to the league system. The leagues from the fifth to eleventh levels inclusive are collectively known as the National League System and are tightly controlled by the FA.
Each league sets its own rules, but all follow the general standard of each club playing everyone else twice with three points being awarded for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. The league table is always ordered with whoever has the most points at the top and the least at the bottom (ways of distinguishing between clubs level on points differ from league to league). Various degrees of promotion and relegation exist between all the leagues and divisions, meaning that any team can theoretically climb (or fall) to any level. However, minimum standards for grounds (floodlighting, seating capacity, etc) sometimes lead to clubs being denied promotion even though their league position would allow it. The clubs in the top four levels are entirely professional, and the fifth nearly so. The sixth has a few fulltime professional clubs with the rest semi-professional, and below that level clubs are either semi-professional or amateur.
The system
Below shows how the current system works. For each division, its official name, sponsorship name (which often differs radically from its official name) and number of clubs is given. Each division promotes to the division(s) that lie directly above them and relegates to the division(s) that lie directly below them.
See also
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