West Ham

West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club based in Stratford, East London, which competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. The club plays at the London Stadium, having moved from its former home, the Boleyn Ground, in 2016.

The club was founded in 1895 as Thames Ironworks and reformed in 1900 as West Ham United. They moved to the Boleyn Ground in 1904, which remained their home ground for over a century. The team initially competed in the Southern League and Western League before joining the Football League in 1919. They were promoted to the top flight in 1923, when they were also losing runners-up in the first ever FA Cup Final held at Wembley. . In 1940, the club won the first Football League War Cup.

West Ham have been FA Cup winners three times; in 1964, 1975 and 1980, and has also been runner-up twice; in 1923 and 2006. The club reached two major European finals, winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965 and finishing runners-up in the same competition in 1976. West Ham also won the Intertoto Cup in 1999. It is one of only eight clubs ever to have fallen below the second tier of English football, spending 63 of the 95 league seasons in the top flight, up to and including the 2020–21 season. The club’s highest league position to date came in 1985–86, when they achieved third place in the then First Division.

Three West Ham players were members of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup final: captain Bobby Moore and goalscorers Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. The club has a long-standing rivalry with Millwall, and the meeting between the two teams has gained notoriety for frequent incidents of football hooliganism. West Ham adopted their burgundy and sky blue color scheme in the early 20th century, with the most common iteration of a burgundy shirt and sky blue sleeves first appearing in 1904.