Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: How many professional football clubs are there in England?
The exact number of clubs varies from year to year as clubs join and leave leagues, fold or merge altogether, but an estimated average of 15 clubs per division implies that more than 7,000 teams of nearly 5,300 clubs are members of a league in the English men's football league system.
The 12-team Premiership is the top level of competition; it is fully professional, but has a salary cap in place. The RFU Championship (formerly National Division One) and National League 1 (formerly National Division Two) are the next rungs down. The Championship became fully professional in 2009–10; League 1 is semi-professional. Below this there are many regional leagues. Attendances at club rugby in England have risen strongly since the sport went professional. Some clubs have good all seater grounds in the 10,000–25,000 capacity range; some have older grounds which are still partly terraced, and others play in council-owned joint-use stadia. Some clubs rent stadia from football clubs.
York City Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of York, North Yorkshire, England. The team compete in the National League North, the sixth tier of league football in England, as of the 2018–19 season.
When football was gaining popularity during the 1870s and 1880s professionals were banned in England and Scotland. Then in the 1880s, soon after Wanderers disbanded, in the north of England, teams started hiring players known as 'professors of football', who were often professionals from Scotland (who were referred to at the time as the 'Scotch Professors'). This was the first time professionalism got into football. The clubs in working class areas, especially in Northern England and Scotland wanted professional football in order to afford playing football besides working. Several clubs were accused of employing professionals.
With the modern passing game believed to have been innovated in London and with England being home to the oldest football clubs in the world dating from at least 1857, the world's oldest football trophy, the Youdan Cup, the first national competition, the FA Cup founded in 1871, and the first ever association football league (1888) as well as England having the first national football team that hosted the world's first ever international football match, a 1–1 draw with Scotland on 5 March 1870 at The Oval in London, England is considered the home of the game of football.
On 8 March 1873, the England national team's 4–2 win over Scotland at the Oval was the first ever victory in international football. The late nineteenth century was dominated by the growing split between the amateur and professional teams, which was roughly aligned along a North-South divide. Northern clubs were keen to adopt professionalism as workers could not afford to play on an amateur basis, while Southern clubs by the large part stuck by traditional "Corinthian" values of amateurism. Eventually, in 1885 the FA legalised professionalism, and when Aston Villa director William McGregor organised a meeting of representatives of England's leading clubs, this led to the formation of the Football League in 1888. Preston North End were inaugural winners in 1888–89, and were also the first club to complete the double of both winning the league and the FA Cup. Aston Villa repeated the feat in 1896–97.
Luton Town Football Club is an English professional football club based in Luton, Bedfordshire. The club was founded in 1885 and became the first professional club in southern England in 1891. Luton Town have played at all professional levels of English football and are currently contesting the 2017–18 season in the third tier, League One. Luton Town have been Football League members for 94 seasons: from 1897 to 1900; from 1920 to 2009, and from 2014 to the present day.
Jeremy Howe (born 29 June 1990) is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Collingwood Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He previously played for the Melbourne Football Club from 2011 to 2015.
Association football is the most popular sport in England, where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association football clubs, England has more clubs involved in the code than any other country as well as the world's first club (Sheffield F.C.), the world's oldest professional association football club (Notts County F.C), the oldest national governing body (the Football Association), the first national team, the oldest national knockout competition (the FA Cup) and the oldest national league (the English Football League). Today England's top domestic league, the Premier League, is one of the most popular and richest sports leagues in the world, with six of the ten richest football clubs in the world.
In the late 1880s significant number of Scottish players participated in English football clubs Payments to players had been made legal in England in 1885 and professional footballers were paid decent salaries. Ironically this attracted many Scottish players southwards to ply their trade in England. Some earned the epithet "Scotch Professors" English football teams with Scottish players included Preston North End which fielded eight Scots in one team and Liverpool Football Club, founded in 1892 with eleven Scots. In Scotland the game remained, in theory anyway, an amateur game until 1893.
Portsmouth Football Club is a professional association football club based in Portsmouth, England which was first founded in 1898. Football was first played in Portsmouth from at least the middle on the nineteenth century, having been brought to the Victorian era military town of Portsmouth by soldiers, sailors and dockers who had originated from other towns and cities in England, particularly from the north of England where the game and rules of association football were already well established. A series of part-time amateur teams and clubs were formed in Portsmouth during the latter half on the nineteenth century as football became more popular and widespread, but none were as successful as the professional Portsmouth F.C., which continues to the present day.
The English Football League, established in 1888 as The Football League by Aston Villa director William McGregor and renamed "English Football League" in 2016, was the first professional football league in the world. Since its founding, however, many other leagues have been founded in England. Sunday leagues are played each weekend by clubs, the study made by the FA sees to this. Over the years there has been an increasing effort to link all these leagues together in a Pyramidal structure allowing promotion and relegation between different levels. The primary motivation for this drive is to maintain the possibility that any club in England may dream of one day rising to the very top, no matter what status they currently hold. In a study made by FIFA in 2006 there are around 40,000 clubs registered with the FA, which is 11,000 more than any other country, the closest being the Brazilian Football Confederation who have 29,000 registered clubs. Even without taking relative population into account, England has more football clubs than any other country in the world.
The world's oldest football clubs were founded in England from 1789 and, in the 1871–72 season, the FA Cup was founded as the world's first organised competition. The first international match took place in November 1872 when England travelled to Glasgow to play Scotland. The quality of Scottish players was such that northern English clubs began offering them professional terms to move south. At first, the FA was strongly opposed to professionalism and that gave rise to a bitter dispute from 1880 until the FA relented and formally legitimised professionalism in 1885. A shortage of competitive matches led to the formation of the Football League by twelve professional clubs in 1888 and the domestic game has ever since then been based on the foundation of league and cup football.
This shift in football power to northern England was also reflected in the foundation of organised league football. By 1885, the FA had grudgingly accepted professionalism in football. The newly emerging professional clubs needed more regular competitive football and in 1888, The Football League was founded, involving 12 clubs form the midlands and north of England. The first southern side to be admitted to the Football League was Woolwich Arsenal, who joined the Second Division in 1893.
This is how Club Atlético Provincial came to be founded on 25 May 1903, thanks to the generosity of the Banco Español Rosario branch's director of the time. 
Originally a football only club, an athletics section would be added in 1910 then tennis in 1920, basketball in 1923 and many other sports would follow along the years. When football became professional in Argentina in the 1930s, CAP decided to remain amateur and football is now played at a recreative level at the club. 
After the introduction of football from the UK navy in the late 19th century, football experienced a boom in Korea and many football clubs and school teams were formed in the 1910s. There were also many corporate football clubs especially in Seoul and Pyongyang, two big cities in Korea. The corporate club division was made in All Korea Football Tournament in Pyongyang in 1930, and Seoul Semi-Professional Football League was founded in 1939, but both were stopped because of the Japanese government's policy during World War II. Seoul Semi-Professional Football League was reopened in 1949, but it was stopped again during the Korean War.
Kent Football United Football Club is a semi-professional football club based in Dartford, Kent, England. They are currently members of the and play at the Glentworth Sports Club.
The history of Reading Football Club covers almost 150 years of both success and failure of the football club from Reading, England. The club was established in 1871, making it one of the oldest professional teams in England. Reading joined the Football League in 1920. The Royals competed at the top flight of English football for the first time in the 2006–07 season.
From then on, the Southern League's influence was reduced, although it remained the second strongest competition in England. In 1968, the Northern Premier League was formed by the strongest clubs from the north of England outside the Football League, and after 1968, all League applicants came from either the Southern League or the Northern Premier League. The Northern League and the Isthmian League, founded in 1905, remained the strongest amateur leagues. The Isthmian League covered the area around London, whilst the Northern League was concentrated in North East England. Those two leagues dominated the FA Amateur Cup, collecting the trophy 50 times between them from 1894 to 1974. However, as both leagues were strictly amateur, none of their clubs applied directly for League status, although occasionally teams turned professional to seek stronger challenges, such as Wimbledon, who progressed from the Isthmian League to the Football League via the Southern League. This remaining group of regional amateur and semi-professional leagues formed a patchwork across England and Wales, collectively known as "non-League football". Non-"League" in this sense referred to outside the national, professional Football League, rather than without a league. There was relatively little movement between leagues, although ambitious clubs could apply for membership of a stronger competition, often to replace a club that had folded.
Football in Yorkshire refers to the sport of association football in relation to its participation and history within Yorkshire, England. The county is the largest in the United Kingdom and as thus has many football clubs professional and amateur.
The English Football League (EFL) is a league competition featuring professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in world football. It was the top-level football league in England from its foundation until 1992, when the top 22 clubs split away to form the Premier League. 
English football has a league system which incorporates thousands of clubs, and is topped by four fully professional divisions. The elite Premier League has 20 teams and is the richest football league in the world. The other three fully professional divisions are the run by the English Football League, the oldest league in the world, and include another 72 clubs. Annual promotion and relegation operates between these four divisions and also between the lowest of them and lower level or "non-League" football. There are a small number of fully professional clubs outside the top four divisions, and many more semi-professional clubs. Thus England has over a hundred fully professional clubs in total, which is considerably more than any other country in Europe.
In 2017 Lewes became the world's first professional or semi-professional football club to pay women and men equally. The club were then admitted to the FA Women's Championship, the second tier of women's football in England. In the same season Brighton & Hove Albion became Sussex's first full-time professional women's team and won promotion to the FA Women's Super League, the top tier of women's football, for the first time.
In the United Kingdom, almost all major sports organizations are dedicated to a single sport, with a few minor multisport clubs such as Catford Wanderers. In addition, like in several other countries, many universities and colleges develop a wide range of student sport activities including at a professional or semi-professional level. Fulham F.C. once ran a professional rugby league team and rowing club, which other football clubs have emulated since. Many football clubs originate from cricket teams. Today, most major cities have separate clubs for each sport (e.g. Manchester United football club and Lancashire County Cricket Club are based in Manchester).
Below the professional club reserve leagues, many clubs also operate reserve teams, which play in separate Reserve leagues, such as the Lancashire League. Some lower leagues, such as the North West Counties Football League organise their own reserve leagues. And, at some lower levels of the pyramid, reserve teams play against first teams.
Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it describes football played at a level below that of the Premier League (20 clubs) and the three divisions of the English Football League (EFL; 72 clubs). The term "non-League" was commonly used well before 1992 when the top football clubs in England all belonged to The Football League (from 2016, the EFL); all clubs who were not a part of The Football League were therefore 'non-League' clubs. The term can be confusing as the vast majority of non-league football clubs in England play in a type of league. Currently, a non-League team would be any club playing in the National League and below and therefore would not play in the EFL Cup.