Blackpool Football Club are an English football club founded in 1887 and located in the Lancashire seaside town of Blackpool. They have been a member of the Football League since 1896, except for the 1899–1900 season, which was spent in non-League football.
The club currently plays in The Championship, the second tier of professional football in England, after winning the 2006–07 League One Play-Off Final. The club's home ground has been Bloomfield Road since 1901, and their nicknames include the 'Pool, the Seasiders and the Tangerines, the latter in reference to the dominant colour of their home kit. The club's motto is Progress, as featured on its crest.
They have a fierce rivalry with local arch-enemy Preston North End, and any League meeting between the two clubs is known as the West Lancashire derby (or, alternatively, the M55 derby).
Blackpool's most notable achievement is winning 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.
During that post-war period, Blackpool made three Wembley appearances in six years and came close to winning the League Championship on several occasions. They also supplied the national teams with many players, notably for England in 1953 when four Blackpool men lined up at Wembley, causing the Daily Mirror to declare that "Blackpool F.C. are playing Hungary today", though it became a day that English football fans would want to forget.
Conversely, in 1982–83, Blackpool finished four places from the bottom of the entire Football League, their lowest-ever ranking in the competition, and were only saved from relegation to the Alliance Premier League (now the Conference) because the re-election system voted in their favour. Twelve years earlier, the club was playing in English football's top flight.
Ian Holloway was appointed as the club's manager in May 2009. He succeeded Simon Grayson, who left the club for Leeds United and who guided Blackpool to promotion to the Championship in 2007.
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