Cardiff City

Cardiff City are one of the most historic and successful football clubs in Wales and the only Welsh club to have won the FA Cup.

The club is owned by Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan and competes in the English Football League (EFL) League One, the third tier of English football. 

Tan has bank-rolled the club for many years but was also responsible for one of the biggest controversies when he changed the club’s main colours from blue to red between 2012 and 2015.

Cardiff have twice played in the Premier League, most recently in the 2018-19 season.

The Bluebirds, as they are known, play their home matches at Cardiff City Stadium, which has been their base since 2009 after moving from Ninian Park.

Cardiff’s proudest moment came in 1927 when they became the first—and so far only—non-English team to win the FA Cup, beating Arsenal 1-0 at Wembley Stadium. 

Hughie Ferguson scored the winning goal, securing Cardiff’s place in football history. The achievement was memorialised  with the placing of a statue of winning captain Fred Keenor outside the club’s stadium in 2012.

Cardiff were also FA Cup finalists in 2008, narrowly losing to Portsmouth.

The club has enjoyed several periods of success, particularly in the early 20th century, when they regularly competed with the best clubs in England. 

The club finished as runners-up in the old First Division in 1923-24 and won the Welsh Cup seven times between 1912 and 1930.

In all they have lifted the Welsh Cup on 22 occasions, the last of which was in 1993, before the Welsh clubs playing in the EFL stopped competing in the competition.

Following a decline in fortunes, Cardiff City spent much of the late 20th century fluctuating between the lower divisions of English football. 

READ MORE: Omer Riza Left Frustrated as 10-Man Cardiff City Have To Settle For a Point

However, the turn of the century saw a revival. Under manager Dave Jones, Cardiff reached the 2008 FA Cup final and later secured promotion to the Premier League for the first time in 2013 under Malky Mackay.

Relegation soon followed, but the club regained its place in the Premier League in 2018 under Neil Warnock. 

Despite a spirited campaign, they were relegated again after just one season.

Cardiff has been home to many iconic players, including Phil Dwyer, Len Davies, Brian Clark. 

John Toshack - who later became a hugely successful manager - Robert Earnshaw, Craig Bellamy and Peter Whittingham, who remains one of the club’s most beloved figures.

During the Premier League season of 2019, the club splashed out a record transfer fee to sign striker Emiliano Sala from French club Nantes for £15m.

Two days later, the Argentine player was killed in a plane crash in the English Channel, a tragedy that was followed by a long and ongoing bitter dispute between the two clubs.

Cardiff maintain a fierce rivalry with Swansea City, their neighbours from 40 miles west of the capital, with their encounters known as the South Wales derby, one of the most passionate fixtures in British football.

Recent years have seen Cardiff struggle to recapture past glories, with managerial changes and ownership debates creating instability. 

After Warnock left in 2019, the club went through six managers in five years as they struggled for the consistency needed to launch another attempt at promotion.

Neil Harris, Mick McCarthy, Steve Morison, Sabro Lamouchi, Erol Bulut and Omer Riza all came and went but they began to  lose touch with the promotion-chasers in the  Championship and struggle at the wrong  end of the table.

After a near miss in the 2023-24 season, Cardiff were eventually relegated at the end of the 2024-25 campaign when they finished bottom of the Championship table.

That was despite a late season gamble when they sacked Riza and handed the reins to Aaron Ramsey as a caretaker appointment for the final weeks of the season.

Ramsey was unable to halt the slide and Cardiff were sent down to League One, a level at which they had not competed for 22 years.

Irishman Brian Barry-Murphy, a former Manchester City academy coach, was appointed head coach in the summer of 2025 and guided a young squad to the top of the table in the early weeks of the 2025-26 season.