Coventry City F.C.

Coventry City F.C.

Coventry City Football Club is an English football club based in Coventry, central England. They compete in Football League One, the third-highest tier of the English football league system. Nicknamed the Sky Blues owing to the colour of their strip, Coventry City were formed in 1883 as Singers F.C., and they joined the Football League in 1919. Their only major trophy was won in 1987 when they beat Tottenham Hotspur 3–2 to win the FA Cup, listed by the FA as one of the twelve classic FA Cup Finals. They also reached two League Cup semi-finals in 1981 and 1990.

The club was a founder member of Premier League in 1992 and spent an impressive 34 consecutive seasons in the English top flight prior to their eventual relegation in 2001. Following eleven seasons in the second-tier Football League Championship without any significant success, Coventry were relegated to Football League One in 2012, the first time in 48 years that the club were destined to play in the English league system's third tier.

Coventry has only qualified for European competition once, during the 1970–71 season, when they competed in the European Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (now the UEFA Europa League), reaching the second round. Despite beating Bayern Munich 2–1 in their home leg, they lost heavily in the away leg to go out of the competition. They were unable to compete in the 1987–88 UEFA Cup Winner's Cup due to the ban on English clubs following the 1985 Heysel Stadium incident.

From 1899 to 2005, Coventry City played at the Highfield Road stadium. During the early-1980s it became the first all-seater stadium in English football, but by the end of the following decade the club's directors decided it was time to construct a larger stadium and chose a site in the Rowley's Green area of the city. The 32,609 capacity Ricoh Arena was opened in August 2005.