Everton began as a chapel team so its cricketers had something to play in winter
Everton Football Club started in 1878 as St. Domingo's FC, set up so members of a Methodist chapel congregation in Liverpool could keep playing sport after the cricket season ended. Outsiders wanted to join, so within a year it took the district's name. It has since spent more seasons in England's top division than any other club.
The club's first match was a one-nil win over Everton Church Club. It helped launch the Football League in 1888 and the Premier League in 1992, one of only three clubs to help found both. Its first home was at Anfield, but a rent dispute with the landowner, John Houlding, sent it to Goodison Park in 1892, where it stayed until moving to a new stadium for the 2026 to 2027 season.
Its first league title, in 1890 to 1891, came with a curious wait. Everton had nearly finished their fixtures by mid-January while Preston still had seven games left, and spent two months watching the gap shrink to two points before both sides lost on the final day, handing Everton the championship. Fred Geary, the top scorer, netted 21 goals. In 1927 to 1928 Dixie Dean scored 60 league goals in 39 games, a top-flight record that still stands.
The club has missed only four top-flight seasons, one in the early 1930s and three in the early 1950s after the post-war team was broken up. Its haul includes nine league titles, five FA Cups and one European trophy. The most successful spell came under Howard Kendall in the mid-1980s, bringing two titles, an FA Cup and the 1985 European Cup Winners' Cup, including a semi-final comeback against Bayern Munich voted the greatest match in Goodison's history. The ban on English clubs from European competition that followed cut short that era.
The 1995 FA Cup remains the last major trophy. Later managers such as David Moyes produced a teenage Wayne Rooney, sold to Manchester United for a club record 28 million pounds in 2004.
Source: Everton F.C.
