Cardiff City FC are one of only a handful of Welsh football clubs to play in the English League system and the only non-English side to have won any of the three major English competitions, landing the FA Cup in 1927.

Cardiff Football Club have also been regular winners (22 times) of the Welsh Cup, which, in 1966-67, gave them entry into the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, where the football club reached the semi-finals the following year.

The Bluebirds played in the top flight from 1921 to 1929, 1952 to 1957 and from 1960 to 1962. The football club's recent history has been less successful, however, with relegation to the League's basement division in 1985-86.

Ten seasons were spent in the bottom rank until promotion was secured to the Championship in 2003-04. The 1995-96 campaign was a particularly low point, with Cardiff City finishing as the football league's third-lowest-placed team.

The football club was founded in 1899 as a way of keeping players from the Riverside Cricket Club together and fit over the winter.

Cardiff FC's most successful decade was the 1920s, with the football club in the top flight for an eight-year stretch and winners of the Welsh Cup five times.

Cardiff City finished runners-up in 1924 in the First Division and enjoyed two FA Cup finals, winning the second one in 1927 with a 1-0 victory over Arsenal to become the only team to take the FA Cup out of England.

Since Cardiff FC's last two-year spell in the top flight in the early 1960s, the football club has spent time in all levels of the League, with a sustained period from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s in the two lower divisions.

The football club's fortunes have since seen a steady upturn, with Cardiff City winning promotion to the Championship in 2003 where they have since remained, ending the 2007-08 season in an impressive fourth place.

In 2008 Cardiff City Football Club reached the FA Cup final for the third time before losing 1-0 to Portsmouth.