THTottenham Hotspur

Club history

Tottenham Hotspur was founded on 5 September 1882 by a group of schoolboys from Tottenham Grammar School, led by Bobby Buckle, who had been playing informally as the Hotspur Football Club -- a name likely honouring Sir Henry Percy, the medieval nobleman nicknamed "Harry Hotspur." The "Tottenham" prefix was added in 1884 to avoid confusion with another club of the same name. The cockerel emblem, first appearing on the crest in 1901, plays on the historical association of fighting cocks with spurs. The club has worn white shirts and navy-blue shorts since 1898-99, giving rise to the secondary nickname "the Lilywhites."

Spurs played on Tottenham Marshes before moving to Northumberland Park and then, in 1899, to White Hart Lane, their home for 118 years until relocating to the state-of-the-art Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019. The club's defining achievement came in 1960-61 under Bill Nicholson, when it became the first club of the 20th century to win the League and FA Cup Double; further FA Cups followed later in the decade, and in 1963 Spurs became the first British club to win a European trophy, the Cup Winners' Cup. Further silverware arrived under Keith Burkinshaw in the early 1980s and via two League Cups in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Since 2001, ENIC International, led by Joe Lewis and chairman Daniel Levy, has controlled the club, overseeing sustained top-four Premier League finishes and a run to the 2019 Champions League final under Mauricio Pochettino, followed by a first major trophy in 17 years -- the 2025 UEFA Europa League -- under Ange Postecoglou. Tottenham's fiercest rivalry, the North London derby against Arsenal, is among English football's most intense.

Sources

• Wikipedia
• Wikipedia - History of Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

English Top-Flight Champions won (2)

• 1950-51
• 1960-61

Runner-up finishes (5)

• 1921-22
• 1951-52
• 1956-57
• 1962-63
• 2016-17

See the full english top-flight champions list for the winner each of these years.