7 of Football's Oldest Competitions and What Their Early Records Can and Cannot Tell Us

The oldest national football competition in the world is England's FA Cup, first contested in 1871-72, and within 50 years cups, leagues and international tournaments had followed in Britain and South America. Their early results are mostly complete, but scorers, line-ups and crowds are often estimated or disputed, unlike the consistent modern match data on RubiScore.

This listicle covers seven of the oldest competitions in association football, plus one short-lived precursor. Each entry covers the first edition, how the format differed from today and what survives in the record. Fixtures, results and competition and season history for the modern era are listed at https://rubiscore.com.

What Came Before the FA Cup?

The Youdan Cup, a one-off Sheffield-rules tournament for 12 clubs in 1867, predates the FA Cup by more than four years. Hallam beat Norfolk in a goalless final decided by rouges, a secondary score, yet newspapers disagree on the margin: most say two rouges to nil, one says a single rouge.

1. The FA Cup (1871-72)

First edition: Conceived by FA secretary Charles Alcock, the cup drew 15 entries, although three clubs withdrew without playing. Wanderers beat Royal Engineers 1-0 in the final at Kennington Oval on 16 March 1872. The scorer, Morton Betts, played under the pseudonym "A. H. Chequer".

Format then: There was no extra time. When a tie was drawn, the committee chose between a replay and sending both clubs through. Each club supplied an umpire, with a neutral referee added in later rounds. Laws changed mid-competition: the 1872 laws, which introduced the corner kick, applied only to the final and one semi-final replay. Queen's Park reached the semi-finals without playing a match, then withdrew rather than return from Glasgow for a replay.

What survives: Every result is known, but not every scorer. In one second-round tie, modern reconstructions mark two Royal Engineers scorers as only "probable" and "possible". The final's crowd is recorded as 2,000, a round number best read as an estimate.

2. The Scottish Cup (1873-74)

Queen's Park called the meeting that formed the Scottish Football Association on 13 March 1873, and the new body launched its own cup that year.

First edition: The SFA's history records 16 teams in the first competition. Queen's Park beat Clydesdale 2-0 at the original Hampden Park on 21 March 1874, with goals from Billy MacKinnon and Robert Leckie, before a crowd given as 2,500. The SFA describes the trophy, made in 1873, as the oldest existing trophy in association football.

Format then: Clydesdale needed two replays to beat 3rd Lanark RV in the quarter-finals. There were no goal nets, and teams changed ends after each goal.

What survives: The scoreline is secure, but the key moment is not. Clydesdale had a first-half goal ruled out after Queen's Park claimed the shot had rebounded off a spectator's knee. With no net, the record rests on the referee's call and newspaper accounts.

3. The Welsh Cup (1877-78)

The Football Association of Wales was founded in Wrexham in 1876, and the Welsh Cup followed in 1877-78. It is the third-oldest national cup, after England's and Scotland's.

First edition: Wrexham beat Druids of Ruabon 1-0 at Acton Park, Wrexham, on 30 March 1878, before a recorded crowd of 1,500. The goal came in the final minute, when the Wrexham forwards charged the Druids defenders and forced the ball over the line.

Format then: Until 1995, English clubs from border areas were sometimes invited to enter. Shrewsbury Town won it six times. Between 1961-62 and 1984-85 the final was played over two legs, at first decided on points rather than aggregate score.

What survives: Because the winning goal came from a scramble, James Davies is described as "credited" with it rather than clearly identified. The roll of honour also mixes Welsh and English winners from different entry rules.

4. The British Home Championship (1883-84 to 1983-84)

England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland had played scattered fixtures since the first international in 1872. In 1884 all six possible matches were played for the first time, so 1883-84 counts as the first edition of football's oldest international tournament.

First edition: Scotland won. Each nation played the others once, with two points for a win and one for a draw.

Format then: Teams level on points shared the title until goal difference was introduced from 1978-79, and in 1955-56 all four nations shared it. Northern Ireland were the last champions.

What survives: The early titles were assigned in hindsight. Contemporary reports treated each match as a separate rivalry, talk of a championship emerged only in the 1890s, and a list of champions reaching back to 1884 had been published by 1908. There was no trophy until 1935, and the 1980-81 edition was abandoned without a winner after England and Wales refused to travel to Belfast.

5. The Football League (1888-89)

Proposed by William McGregor in March 1888 and formally created in Manchester on 17 April, the Football League is the oldest professional league competition in the world.

First edition: The season began on 8 September 1888 with 12 clubs from the Midlands and the North. Preston North End finished unbeaten, with 18 wins and 4 draws from 22 matches, and also won the FA Cup.

Format then: The original rules said positions would be calculated "from wins, draws, and losses" without saying how. Two points for a win and one for a draw was not agreed until late November, after some clubs had wanted no points for a draw. The referee stood on the touchline between two club umpires, and there were no shirt numbers, goal nets or substitutes.

What survives: The first goal has had at least four claimants. Gershom Cox's own goal, Jack Gordon and Fred Dewhurst were all credited until Mark Metcalf and Robert Boyling found, in 2013, a newspaper advert showing a later kick-off at Wolves, leaving Bolton's Kenny Davenport first. Totals vary too: League material gives 587 goals for the season, other reconstructions 586, and John Goodall's tally appears as 20 or 21. Even an official record of the season, compiled by R.H. Richards, contains a wrong score.

6. The Argentine Primera División (1891)

Argentina's first championship was run in 1891 by the Argentine Association Football League, set up mainly by the Scot Alec Lamont. It is widely described as the oldest league outside the United Kingdom.

First edition: Five clubs played each other twice between April and August. St Andrew's and Old Caledonians both finished on 13 points and were declared joint champions. A play-off on 13 September then decided only who kept the medals, and St Andrew's won it after extra time with a Charles Moffatt hat-trick.

Format then: No goal-based tie-breaker was applied, although Old Caledonians had the better goal difference. The league lasted one season, no championship was held in 1892, and today's Argentine Football Association descends from a separate body founded by Alexander Watson Hutton in 1893.

What survives: Even the champion is contested, because the AFA's website lists only St Andrew's for 1891. Reconstructions give the play-off as 3-1, another account says 3-0, and some results survive only as a win or a loss with no score. The "oldest outside the UK" label is also debatable: the Netherlands staged a championship in 1888-89, but it is not treated as official because its clubs played unequal numbers of matches.

7. The Copa América (1916)

The first South American Championship was staged by Argentina from 2 to 17 July 1916 to mark the centenary of its independence. CONMEBOL was founded during the tournament, on 9 July.

First edition: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay played a single round-robin of six matches with no final. Uruguay won by a point after the deciding match against Argentina was suspended after five minutes because of crowd trouble, then completed the next day in Avellaneda as a 0-0 draw. Isabelino Gradín was top scorer with three goals.

Format then: Four teams and six matches compare with the 16-team group-and-knockout editions of 2016 and 2024.

What survives: Results and scorers are documented, but crowds are mostly round numbers. CONMEBOL does not count a 1910 centenary tournament in Argentina, and its official best-player award began only in 1987, so the first 32 editions have none. CONMEBOL calls it the oldest national-team tournament in the world, which holds only among competitions still played; the Home Championship began 32 years earlier.

How Should Early-Era Numbers Be Read Today?

Across all seven, results are the most reliable layer of the record, while scorers, line-ups, attendances and timings grow less certain the further back they go. Rules also changed in ways that alter what the numbers mean:

  1. Points: Three points for a win arrived in the Football League only in 1981-82. Preston's 1888-89 record would be worth 58 points today rather than 40, so compare wins and draws, not points totals.
  2. Tie-breakers: Goal average separated level teams in the Football League until 1976, and level Home Championship teams shared titles until 1978-79.
  3. Substitutes: None were allowed in the Football League until 1965, and then only for injuries, so early appearance totals reflect full matches.
  4. Laws of the game: Penalty kicks arrived in 1891, and the 1925 offside change, which cut the opponents needed between an attacker and the goal line from three to two, transformed scoring rates. Goals-per-game figures from either side of 1925 are not directly comparable.
  5. Sample size: Seasons of 22 matches, or eight in Argentina in 1891, produce fragile per-game rates.
  6. Source conflicts: When reconstructions disagree, as with the 1891 play-off score, the honest figure is a range or a note, not a single number.

In modern competitions, results, line-ups and the minute of each goal, card and substitution are logged as matches happen, and RubiScore's competition and season history pages present that data in a consistent format. For the oldest editions, the result is usually safe; almost everything else deserves a footnote.

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