West Bromwich Albion

West Bromwich Albion Football Club commonly known as West Brom, The Baggies or The Albion, is a professional association football club based in West Bromwich, West Midlands, England. They compete in the EFL Championship, the second level of the English football league. The club was formed in 1878 and has played at its home ground, The Hawthorns, since 1900.

Albion was one of the 12 founding members of the Football League in 1888, the first professional football league in the world. The club has spent the majority of its existence in the top tier of English football, where as of 2020–21 it has played for 82 seasons. The club has been champions of England once, in 1919–20, and has been runners-up twice.

Albion teams have reached ten FA Cup finals and won the Cup on five occasions. The first win came in 1888, the year the league was founded, and the most recent in 1968, the club's last major trophy. It also won the Football League Cup at the first attempt in 1966.

The club's longest continuous period in the top division spanned 24 years between 1949 and 1973, and from 1986 to 2002 it spent its longest ever spell out of the top division. The team has played in navy blue and white stripes for most of the club's history, and the club badge features a throstle perched on a hawthorn branch. Albion has a number of long-standing rivalries with other West Midlands clubs, with its traditional rivals being Aston Villa and Wolves.

Albion contests the Black Country derby with the latter.