Which English club, founded in 1862, is recognised as the oldest professional association football club in the world?

The World's Oldest Professional Football Club

Notts County hold a record that no other club on the planet can claim: they are the oldest professional association football club in the world. Founded in 1862 in Nottingham, England, they predate most of the rules, competitions, and structures that we now take for granted in the beautiful game.

To put that in perspective, when Notts County were formed, Abraham Lincoln was still President of the United States, the American Civil War was raging, and the London Underground hadn't even opened yet. Football as a codified sport had only just been standardised by the newly formed Football Association in 1863. Notts County were already a year old before the FA even wrote the rulebook.

Why Nottingham Produced a Football Pioneer

Nottingham in the mid-19th century was a prosperous industrial city with a strong culture of organised sport. The club grew out of a group of local gentlemen who gathered at the George Hotel in the city — the kind of informal meeting that spawned many of the great sporting institutions of the Victorian era. What made Notts County different was their longevity and their willingness to evolve with the professional game.

They became one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888 — the world's first professional football league — cementing their place at the very foundation of organised football as we know it.

A Famous Strip and a Famous Influence

Notts County also have a surprising global footprint. Their black-and-white striped shirts are said to have directly inspired the famous kit of Juventus, the Italian giants. In 1903, Juventus needed a new strip and contacted Notts County, who sent over a set of their shirts. The Turin club adopted the design, and to this day one of the most recognisable kits in world football carries a little piece of Nottingham in its DNA.

A Club That Has Seen It All

Notts County's history is one of remarkable highs and dramatic lows. They won the FA Cup back in 1894, but they've also spent long stretches in the lower tiers of English football. In 2019, they were relegated from the English Football League entirely — an almost unthinkable fate for a club of such historic standing. They bounced back, earning promotion and returning to the EFL, much to the relief of football historians everywhere.

Younger clubs like Stoke City (1863) and Nottingham Forest (1865) often get lumped into conversations about historic English clubs, but neither can match that 1862 founding date.

In a sport obsessed with trophies and transfer fees, there's something quietly magnificent about Notts County's greatest claim to fame being simply: they were there first.