잉글랜드 프리미어리그 가이드 | The Beginners’ Guide to the EPL

The EPL or English Premier League is well-known to football fans around the world but to some it remains a mystery. For those who have little interest in football or little knowledge of the game, the EPL is an unknown world. So, for those of you who want to know about the world of the EPL, here is the beginners’ guide.

The basics

The EPL is a league for professional football clubs in England and Wales and is the highest division within the football league system of these two countries. Twenty teams play in the EPL and there is an annual system of promotion and relegation between the EPL and the Football League which allows three teams to go up and go down between the two leagues.

The season runs from August to May and each team plays each other twice, once at home, (at its own stadium), and once away, (at the opponents’ stadium), playing thirty-eight matches each season. Three points are received for a win, one for a draw and none for a defeat and the league order is decided on the number of points. If teams are level on points then the order is decided by the difference between the number of goals scored and the number of goals conceded, and if these figures are level then the highest-scoring team is rewarded.

The league is sponsored by Barclays Bank and so it is officially named the Barclays Premier League but the sponsors’ name is rarely used by football fans, who call the league “the EPL”, “the Premier League” or “the Premiership”. The EPL began without a sponsor and was sponsored by Carling, a brand of lager similar to beer, from 1993 to 2001 and then by Barclaycard, the credit card company, until 2004 when Barclays became involved.

Beginnings

The EPL was created in 1992 when the twenty-two teams in the First Division of the Football League decided to leave the Football League, which had existed for over a hundred years, and agreed a deal for television coverage of their games which gave them much more money. Now the EPL is the richest and most popular league in the world.

The first season of the EPL was in 1992-93 and included twenty-two clubs but the number of teams was reduced to twenty in 1995. Manchester United was the first winner of the EPL title and has won the trophy ten times. Only three other teams have been EPL champions, Blackburn Rovers, (in 1994-95), Arsenal, (in 1997-98, 2001-02 and 2003-04) and Chelsea (in 2004-05 and 2005-06). Manchester United is the current holder of the EPL trophy.

The clubs

A total of forty-two clubs have played in the EPL, including two new members this season, Hull City and Stoke City, but only seven have played in every one of the EPL’s seventeen seasons; Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

The teams come from many different cities and towns in England but no team from Wales has ever played in the EPL. There are currently five teams from the capital city, London; Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United.

The north-west of England, however, has the greatest number of teams and there are two teams from the cities of Manchester and Liverpool; Manchester City and Manchester United from Manchester and Liverpool and Everton from Liverpool. There also three other teams from small towns in the north-west; Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic from Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan.

Additionally, there are three teams from the north-east, Newcastle United from the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sunderland from the city with that name and Middlesbrough from the town of the same name, and one team from the city of Kingston-upon-Hull on northern England’s east coast, Hull City.

There are also three teams from central England, known as the Midlands; Aston Villa from the city of Birmingham, Stoke City from the city of Stoke-on-Trent and West Bromwich Albion from the town of West Bromwich near Birmingham. And finally there is one team from southern England, Portsmouth, from the city of the same name on the south coast.

What do you think?
Which club will win the EPL in 2008-09?

© Andy Wray, British Council Thailand and Bangkok Post

Sources
Wikipedia - FA Premier League (retrieved 29 July 2008)
Wikipedia - List of FA Premier League Clubs (retrieved 29 July 2008)


<Questions>

Understanding the story
1. What do the letters EPL mean?
2. What is it?
3. When was it created?
4. Why was it created?
5. What is the official name for the EPL?

Answer

True or false?
1. The EPL has twenty teams.
2. The EPL had twenty-two teams in its first season.
3. Two teams are promoted to the EPL each season.
4. Liverpool has never won the EPL.
5. Only three teams have ever been EPL champion.

Answer

Number
1. How many teams have played in the EPL?
2. How many teams have played in every season of the EPL?
3. How many EPL teams are from London?
4. How many times has Manchester United been EPL champion?
5. How many matches does each EPL team play in a season?

Answer