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England national football team

men's national association football team representing England

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ47762 ↗
Source-derived summary

The England national football team, nicknamed The Three Lions, have represented England in men's international football since the first international match in 1872. They are governed by The Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, which is affiliated with UEFA and FIFA. England competes in three major international tournaments: the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship and UEFA Nations League.

England and Scotland are together the oldest national football teams in the world, having played in the world's first international football match in 1872. England plays home matches at Wembley Stadium in London, and their training headquarters is St George's Park in Burton upon Trent. Thomas Tuchel is the current head coach.

England won their lone FIFA World Cup title on home soil in 1966 , making them one of eight nations to have won the World Cup. They have qualified for the World Cup seventeen times, finishing in third place in 2026, and fourth place in 1990 and 2018. England have never won the European Championship, with their best performances to date being runners-up finishes in 2020 and 2024. As a constituent country of the United Kingdom, England are not a member of the International Olympic Committee (as English athletes compete for Great Britain), and so do not compete at the Olympic Games. England are the only team to have won the World Cup at senior level but not their own major continental title, and the only team representing a non–sovereign state to have won the World Cup.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “England national football team” as men's national association football team representing England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around England, national and football.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1872, 1966, 2026, 1990—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1863. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with England, national and football providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “England national football team”, the useful work is to connect “men's national association football team representing England” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47762. VIAF identifies the subject as 464155104003676201758. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1872, 1966, 2026 and 1990.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “England national football team”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow England national football team primary sources, England national football team archive and England research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “England national football team”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “England national football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.