West Ham United

West Ham United Football Club is a football club from England, from the city of London. The club was founded in 1895 and plays in the English Football League Championship, the country's second tier. It has played its home matches at the London Stadium since 2016, after moving from its former home, the Boleyn Ground.

Originally called Thames Ironworks, in 1900 it was renamed West Ham United. In 1904 it moved to the Boleyn Ground, which remained its home for more than a century. It originally played in the Southern Football League and the Western League before joining the Football League in 1919. It reached the top flight in 1923, the year in which it was also runner-up in the first FA Cup final held at Wembley. In 1940, during the Second World War, it won the Football League War Cup.

West Ham has won the FA Cup three times: 1964, 1975 and 1980, a competition in which it was also a finalist in 1923 and 2006. At international level, it reached the final of the UEFA Europa Conference League, winning the title in 2023, in addition to reaching two European Cup Winners' Cup finals, winning the title in 1965 and finishing runner-up in 1976. It also won the Intertoto Cup as one of the winning clubs in 1999.

It is one of eight English teams that have never dropped below the second division. Its best performance in the top flight was third place in the First Division in 1985-86.

Three West Ham United players were part of the England squad that won the 1966 World Cup: captain Bobby Moore and the goalscorers Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters.

It also maintains a historic rivalry with Millwall, and the confrontation between the two has gained notoriety for frequent incidents of football hooliganism. West Ham adopted its claret and sky blue colour combination in the early 20th century, and the most common version, with a claret shirt and sky blue sleeves, first appeared in 1904.