Blackpool F.C.

Blackpool Football Club is an English professional association football club based in the seaside town of Blackpool, Lancashire, which competes in League One, the third tier of English football. Founded in 1887, Blackpool's home ground since 1901 has been Bloomfield Road. Blackpool won the 1953 FA Cup Final, the so-called "Matthews Final", in which they beat Bolton Wanderers 4–3, overturning a 1–3 deficit in the closing stages of the game. That same year, four Blackpool players were in the England team which lost against Hungary at Wembley.[1][2] The club has had 47 players who have represented their country, including thirteen for England. The club made three FA Cup Final appearances in six years between 1948 and 1953 and in the 1950s had four top-six finishes in the Football League First Division, then the top tier, with their best position being runners-up to Manchester United in 1955–56. In 1956, Stanley Matthews was the inaugural recipient of the Ballon d'Or.[3] Blackpool won promotion to the Premier League in 2009–10, becoming the first club in English football to have won promotion from every division of the Football League via the play-off system. It was their first appearance in English football's top division in 39 years. They have not been promoted automatically since finishing as Fourth Division runners-up to Chesterfield in 1984–85. They have won a league title once, in 1929–30, which took them from the Second Division to the top flight for the first time. Between 1987 and 2019, the club was owned by the Oyston family. Nine years after buying the club, Owen Oyston was jailed for the 1992 rape and indecent assault of a 16-year-old girl.[4] His wife, Vicki, took over the chairmanship of the club during her husband's three-year prison term (he was originally sentenced to six years). The couple's son, Karl, took over in 1999 and remained in the role for nineteen years. In 2018, after the Oyston family was found, in a High Court judgement, to have operated an "illegitimate stripping" of the club, paying out £26.77 million to companies they owned, Owen relieved Karl of his role and gave it to his daughter, Natalie. In June 2019, Simon Sadler, a 49-year-old Blackpool-born businessman, bought a 96.2% share in the club,[5] completely removing the Oyston family from any involvement.[6] Blackpool has a local rivalry with Preston North End, and matches between the two clubs are known as the West Lancashire derby