Swansea City

Swansea City Association Football Club (in Welsh Clwb Pêl-droed Dinas Abertawe) is a football club from Wales (United Kingdom), from the city of Swansea. It was founded in 1912 and currently plays in the English Football League Championship, the second tier of England.

Founded in 1912 as Swansea Town AFC, it adopted its current name in 1969, after Swansea obtained city status. It joined the Football League in 1921 and has been a member ever since. Between 1981 and 1983 it played in the First Division (the top tier of English football before the creation of the Premier League), finishing sixth in its first season. In the 2010/11 season it won promotion to the Premier League, becoming the first Welsh club to take part in that competition since its foundation in 1992.

Together with Cardiff City F.C. and Wrexham A.F.C., it is considered one of the three great clubs of the country's football. Since in 1921 the Welsh national league, which lacked enough competitive teams, was integrated into the English football league system by joining the Southern Football League directly (which today constitutes the seventh and eighth tiers), the Football Association of Wales had no league of its own between 1921 and 1992, and for this reason the three great teams have competed in league tournaments outside the country since that date, as they did not join the Welsh Premier League when it was created in 1992 and were excluded from competing in the Welsh Cup, a tournament that until 1995 included both the clubs competing in Wales and the Welsh clubs competing in England, and whose most successful champions are the three most important clubs, although Cardiff City with 22 and Wrexham with 23 have more than double the titles in that competition of Swansea with 10.

In the 2012–13 season, it had its great campaign with Michael Laudrup as manager, winning the English League Cup by beating Bradford City, who were playing in Football League Two, the fourth tier of England, 5–0 in the final. This was Swansea's first title in the top tier of English football and the second by a Welsh club in English competitions, since Cardiff City had won the FA Cup in 1927. Furthermore, thanks to this achievement, Swansea qualified for the first time in its history for an international competition, the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, a competition in which it made a winning debut, first eliminating Malmö FF of Sweden and then Petrolul Ploiesti of Romania in the qualifying rounds, to reach the group stage where it finished second, also beating Valencia C.F. at Mestalla, with goals from Wilfried Bony, Michu and Jonathan de Guzmán. Finally the team fell in the round of 32 to S.S.C. Napoli. After the 2017–18 season, its relegation to the Football League Championship was confirmed with its 2–1 defeat to Stoke City, ending a run of 7 consecutive years in the Premier League.