Based in the London borough of Greenwich, Charlton Athletic Football Club was founded in 1905 when a number of local youth clubs formed a football team.

The football club has played for most of its history at The Valley, where it moved in 1919, although it has had spells sharing Crystal Palace FC's ground at Selhurst Park and West Ham's at Upton Park.

Charlton Athletic have enjoyed four separate spells in the top flight, most recently from 2000 to 2007, but the Addicks' most successful periods were the 1930s, when the football club enjoyed its highest league finishes, and the 1940s, when the team reached the FA Cup final twice, winning in 1947 when they beat Burnley 1-0.

The Addicks turned professional in 1920 and entered the Football League in 1921. Successive promotions saw the football club rise to the First Division in 1936 and the following year Charlton were runners-up.

The period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s Charlton Athletic were largely a settled Second Division club, but this changed in the 1980s, which brought a period of highs and lows both on and off the field.

The biggest low for Charlton Athletic was the bankruptcy hearing at the High Court in 1984, which led to the football club leaving The Valley and beginning a five-year groundshare at Selhurst Park with Palace.

Two years later, though, Lennie Lawrence steered Charlton Athletic into the First Division for the first time in 30 years and they remained in the top flight for four years.

Charlton Athletic returned to the top tier, by then the Premier League, in 1998, when the football club beat Sunderland on penalties in the Division One play-off final.

Despite relegation the following season, the football club bounced back into the top flight in 2000 for a run of seven seasons, with Charlton's highest finishing position at seventh place in the 2003-04 campaign. The Addicks slipped back into the Championship in 2007, where they have since remained.