Reading F.C. country United Kingdom
Reading Football Club ( (listen) RED-ing) is a professional football club based in Reading, Berkshire, England. From the 2023/24 season, the club will compete in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. The club plays its home matches at the Madejski Stadium.
Reading are nicknamed The Royals, due to Reading's location in the Royal County of Berkshire, though they were previously known as The Biscuitmen, due to the town's association with Huntley and Palmers. Established in 1871, the club is one of the oldest teams in England, but did not join The Football League until 1920, and first played in the top tier of English football league system in the 2006–07 season. The club competed in the 2012–13 Premier League season, having gained promotion at the end of the 2011–12 season after winning the Championship, but were relegated after just one season back in the top flight.
Reading won the 1987–88 Full Members' Cup and were one of only two Second Division clubs to lift the trophy. The club's best performance in the FA Cup was reaching the semi-finals which they achieved on two occasions: once in 1926-27 and again in 2014-15.
The club played at Elm Park for 102 years, from 1896 to 1998. In 1998, the club moved to the new Madejski Stadium, which is named after the club's former chairman Sir John Madejski. In 2021, the club announced that the ground would be known as the Select Car Leasing Stadium for the subsequent decade for sponsorship reasons.
The club holds the record for the number of successive league wins at the start of a season, with a total of 13 wins at the start of the 1985–86 Third Division campaign and also the record for the number of points gained in a professional league season with 106 points in the 2005–06 Football League Championship campaign. Reading then finished eighth in the 2006–07 Premier League, their first-ever season as a top-flight club.
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