Football in Tierrador

Football is the most popular sport in Tierrador, along with playing a prominent role on the culture, politics, and history of the country. The presence of the sport in the country dates back to the 1850s, with the introduction of the game by Cartadanian immigrants in neighborhoods of Qabór. Eventually, the first professional football club, the Mineros, was founded by a steelworkers union in Qabór. As the sport grew in popularity throughout the remaining decades of the 19th century, more clubs would begin to pop up throughout mainland Tierrador. In 1889, Las Rozas became the first Commonwealth to establish an official football tournament, with the Las Rozas Premier Division. Around the beginning of the 20th century, more commonwealths would begin to establish leagues of their own, and eventually, Football Tierrador was established in 1953 to serve as the governing body for both the national team and the TCL. In 1959, the National Football League was officially recognized as a national circuit for club competition, and in 1964, the Premiership was founded as the top division for the pyramid.

Football in Tierrador
National Stadium
Country	Tierrador
Governing body	Football Tierrador
National team(s)	Tierrador
First played	1852
Registered players	1.1 million
Clubs	15,601 (1,261 registered with Football Tierrador)
National competitions
Tierrador Cup National Championship
Club competitions
Premiership NFL Championship Tierradorian Commonwealth Leagues Top League - 5 leagues TCL One - 18 divisions TCL Two - 13 divisions TCL Three - 9 divisions Qabóri Football Association
International competitions
WAFF World Cup UCFA Cronan Championship WAFF Club World Cup UCFA Champions League UCFA League of Crona
Audience records
Single match	122,423 (Tierrador 3–2 Alstin at National Stadium in 2009)

Tierradorian football has been very successful in garnering consistent international attention. The national team won the 2030 WAFF World Cup over Yonderre, but even before that, they have participated in every World Cup, finishing in favorable positions most of the time. The national team has also participated in every UCFA Cronan Championships since the tournament's inception, winning six. Tierradorian football clubs have won a combined 97 titles in both the UCFA Champions League and the UCFA League of Crona, the most of any other UCFA member. Some of the most notable Tierradorian footballers include Vinny Hernandez, Aphío Atazonas, Kenan Tuqas, Hugo Sprinska, Terio Mananót, Lazón Utulats, Mikhail Tapaselett, Ulo and Iaka Larapet, Roman Roteraso, Taiyo Hendrix, Patricio Martoza, and Lazón Šaphiana. Some of the most notable Tierradorian football managers include Kirk Coley, Todd Qaunas, Kirby Pouel, and David Laporets.

History

19th century

Football was first introduced in Tierrador in the 1830s, and the first official football match, between the Mineros of Qabór FC and Kostané Football Club was played in 1852 in Qabór, which resulted in a 1–0 victory for the Mineros. Eventually, the game would spread to various different parts of Las Rozas, and by 1870, there were 23 clubs spread throughout the city of Qabór, in the unofficial Qabóri Football Association. The QFA lasted for 29 years, with Kostané, Mineros, and Coricos F.C. sharing all 29 league titles. Despite the success from the QFA's initial years, a large majority of the 23 member clubs would eventually disband due to financial issues over the course of the next decade. By 1889, the QFA had officially disbanded, being replaced by the Las Rozas Premier Division. That same year, the Las Rozas Premier Division organized a team consisting of the best players from Las Rozas, Auqali, Aracadó, and Onancía, for a friendly match against Alstin. The Tierradorian side shocked the Alstinians in a 2–1 victory in Taisgol, and the eastern team would spike in popularity.

In 1891, Auqali established the Auqali Premiership, which originally consisted of 10 teams throughout northern Auqali. The Premiership had also established an agreement with the Las Rozas Premier Division, where the champion of Auqali would meet the champion of Las Rozas for the Tierrador Cup, in 1892. Ambaqwe-based S.D. Ambaqwe dominated the Auqali Premiership for its first decade, competing with bigger club like Mineros, and later, Aracadó-based Guerreros in the Tierrador Cup as well. In 1899, the Independent City of Taisgol registered the club S.D. Taisgol-Qapitol with the Las Rozas Premier Division, being accepted for the 1900 season. Starting in that same year, Ambaqwe and Qapitol would form a fierce rivalry, in what would become the Wooden Bucket Classic in 1927.

1900–1953

Qapitol's addition to the Premier Division nearly doubled its competition level, and subsequently, its popularity. To combat this, the Aracadó Division began recruiting top clubs from Ceylonia, in hopes of successfully convincing a Qapitol-level power to their own league. Newly-established FC East Sachia had applied to join the Aracadó Division in 1901, however it would be immediately shot down by the government of Ceylonia. In 1907, Telohakee established its own football league, Telohakee First Division (later renamed to Telo1). That same year, the government of Telohakee established the Telohakee Football Union, to serve as a main governing body for the First Division. One year later, TFU president Lazón Latos met with the commissioners of both Auqali and Aracadó in Topaqoí, to discuss the creation of a parent league for the three football leagues, as a way to compete with the Premier Division's popularity. This triggered a four-year long feud between the Commonwealth Leagues of Tierrador, which was founded in 1909, and the Las Rozas Premier Division.

The 1909 Feud, as it is called in official Football Tierrador records, made its way into the Tribunal Court numerous times throughout its four-year duration. Las Rozas Premier Division v. Commonwealth Leagues of Tierrador in 1913 was the landmark case which officially ended the 1909 Feud. The Tribunal Court ruled in favor of the TCL, and allowed for them to coexist with the Las Rozas Premier Division. Eventually, in 1927, the LRPD, along with the top leagues of Qaleqa, Tansher, and Bogocía, joined the TCL, and the TCL became the dominant force of football in Tierrador. In 1929, the TCL acquired the Tierrador Cup, and its regulatory body, the Cup Commission. From the 1929 season, the TCL began allowing OIAA-affiliated universities to field their own teams in the Tierrador Cup. After Taisgol University won three Tierrador Cups in the 1930s, they sought to join the TCL, but were denied by the Las Rozas Premier Division, claiming it would be unfair for a university team to play against professional clubs.

Despite the LRPD denying the university, the Auqali Premiership quickly accepted them, along with two Auqali-based universities; University of Auqali and Auqali Mechanical University (now Auqali Tech), under conditions enforced by the TCL and OIAA which state that all earnings by the three teams go directly to the university and not the student athletes, whom are instead compensated by being provided free education and housing for the duration of their eligibility under OIAA rules. In 1942, Moscakee, Anbarsnia, Porvaos, and Tawakee all joined the TCL. Sonaxa and Ulunkheria joined in 1944, and Alcosky joined in 1945. By 1945, all of mainland Tierrador was represented by one or two leagues per commonwealth. Teams from Auqali, Las Rozas, Telohakee, and Ulunkheria dominated the TCL competition, carried mostly by the largest clubs in their respective commonwealth.

In 1945, a coalition of several TCL member clubs, including Ambaqwe, Mineros, Qapitol, U.D. Topaqoí, and Puerto Rosario C.F. broke off from the TCL and formed the National Football League, which sparked the 1945 Feud. The 1945 Feud was significantly much larger in controversy than the 1909 Feud, as it mainly involved around forty breakaway clubs against arguably the largest football organization in the country, at the time. Due to the immense profitability of the breakaway clubs, spearheaded by the popularity of Qapitol and Mineros, both the NFL Championship and NFL League One saw very successful inaugural seasons in the 1945 season. A lot of the NFL member clubs represented cities which were quite far from each other. Because of this, the league signed a lucrative advertising deal with TerraRail in 1952, offering many travel accommodations for fans who wished to travel to various cities across Tierrador to watch their club play. Consequently, the CLT had seen a large decrease in ticket sales from the 1952 and 1953 seasons.

1953–1964: Football Tierrador

In the midst of the second Feud, Qaphenć Qalir Šotas recommended the establishment of a governing body for football in Tierrador to Pedro Kintón, with emphasis on the hypothetical organization having major administrative power over both the TCL and NFL, which Šotas believed would reduce the amount of disputes between the two organizations. Therefore, in 1953, Kintón signed a Crown Order establishing Football Tierrador as the governing body of football, directly funded via government subsidy. In 1954, the ongoing Feud once again reached the Tribunal Court, when a lawsuit by the TCL against Football Tierrador for FT's approval of Porvaos City's attempt to apply for an NFL license. The Tribunal Court ruled against the TCL this time, owing to Football Tierrador's newfound authority over both leagues allowing for FT to realign the leagues to their choosing.

In 1956, Football Tierrador added the NFL League Two, made up of 22 randomly-selected clubs from the TCL's first and second levels, while allowing for both levels to recruit clubs from their respective commonwealth to replace the clubs moved to the NFL. This would be short-lived, however, as the league failed to generate revenue due to not being included in the Championship's television rights deal with TBS, which was signed in 1958. During the the NFL Championship's tenure as the top division in Tierrador, Mineros and Qapitol combined for doubled the title count of the rest of the teams that competed. Both of those clubs, along with Ambaqwe, Topaqoí, S.D. Prismarine City, and S.D. Lámparas de Ominasky, enjoyed a lucrative share of the NFL's television rights deal with TBS. The 1945 Feud had mostly calmed down after the TCL signed a deal of their own with TierraVision in 1960, which gave, at the time, all 613 competing clubs of the 1960 season a guaranteed __% share of all revenues, equating to around $7,773 per club for that season.

With the 1945 Feud finally ending in 1960, a new Feud had emerged from the aforementioned TCL-TierraVision deal, when 38 clubs in both the second and third levels of the TCL split and formed four independent conferences, which would eventually merge to form the Qabóri Football Association. The QFA would operate outside of Football Tierrador regulations, leading to sanctions placed on the league by WAFF, which would result in their expulsion from the Tierrador Cup, which would last until 1999. In 1962, Magoas F.C., from the suburban town of Magoas, Las Rozas, made history as the first club to climb all seven levels of the Tierradorian football pyramid, by debuting in the NFL Championship for that season. Later that year, before the end of the 1962 season, executives from Mineros, Lámparas, Ambaqwe, Qapitol, Prismarine City, and Olímpico met with the CEO of the Qabóri Broadcasting Company to discuss an massive television deal exclusively with the five aforementioned clubs.

Unsurprisingly, this move received fierce backlash from the NFL, who stated that the clubs had to abide by the NFL's deal with TBS due to contractual and licensing agreements between the clubs and the league. QBC offered the idea of sponsoring an independent league consisting of the six clubs, plus an additional six clubs from the NFL Championship, which would be known as the Premiership. In 1963, the Premiership was formed, consisting of the following twelve NFL clubs: Mineros, Lámparas, Ambaqwe, Qapitol, Prismarine City, Olímpico, Tawakee, Porvaos City, Guerreros, Norwalk Town, Topaqoí, and Naihungo City. When attempting to register with Football Tierrador, the Premiership and QBC were belted with lawsuits from both the NFL and TCL, which eventually became the 1963 Feud. The lawsuits were quickly resolved by Football Tierrador's approval of the license, and it allowed the Premiership to begin play in the 1964 season.

1964–1976: Early years of the Premiership

Due to the twelve Premiership clubs leaving the NFL Championship after the 1962 season, they did not play in the 1963 season or the newly-founded NFL Cup. Porvaos City won the 1963 Tierrador Cup, however they were not allowed to compete in the following year's UCFA League of Crona tournament, with S.D. Anloiya, the runners-up, taking the bid instead. C.F. Êtoune won the 1962 NFL Championship, in a shortened, 18-game season caused by the departure of a little over half the league's clubs. With the creation of the Premiership, Tierradorian football began to gain international attention, as QBC marketed the league's prestige and competition to different Cronan countries, including Ceylonia, Porlos, and Alstin. The Premiership's first decade was mainly dominated by Qapitol, Ambaqwe, and Topaqoí, who won a combined nine of the first ten Premierships from 1964. Despite the dominance from those three clubs, most, if not all, of the Premierships within that window were won by very low point margins, with the 1966 edition even resulting in a three-way tie between Ambaqwe, Topaqoí, and Olímpico. QBC's solution to this issue was a drawing, with the club that gets drawn first being the champion. Olímpico was drawn first, giving them their first Premiership.

In 1965, the TCL consolidated the 18 commonwealths into five regions: South, Northern Coast, Rice Belt, Western, and Polynesian. For the 1966 season, a new official third level was established by the TCL, based on the five newly-established regions. These leagues were the Southern League, the Northern Coast League, the Rice Belt League, the Western League (now the Hemp League), and the Polynesian League, all consisting of 70 clubs pooled from the Commonwealth Leagues. Meanwhile, the NFL Championship had absorbed NFL League One, bringing the league's total capacity to 32 teams, where it remains today. By the end of the 1967 season, there were four official levels of the Tierradorian football pyramid, with the Tierrador Cup being the country's de facto national championship. This era was particularly dominated by Ambaqwe, who had won their first three Premierships in 1963, 1969, and 1970, along with the 1969 and 1970 Tierrador Cups. Qapitol and Olímpico had also seen success in the 1960s, with Qapitol winning four Premierships (1962, 1964, 1965, 1967) and one Tierrador Cup (1965), and Olímpico winning two Premierships and two Tierrador Cups, both occurring in 1966 and 1968. The Taisgol in-city rivalry had gained more prominence throughout the football world, with both matchups in 1968 being the two most-watched Tierradorian football matches in history, until 1996.

The establishment of the UCFA League of Champions in 1972 sparked the Champions Feud between the Premiership/NFL and the TCL, who had argued that their respective champions should represent Tierrador in the competition, of which at its establishment, only allowed one team per nation until 1976. The Premiership/NFL mainly argued that the talent gap between their clubs and the clubs within the TCL was extremely skewed in the Premiership's favor, which was a successful argument in the first two hearings held by Football Tierrador in January and March of 1972. In April 1972, two months before the start of the competition with Tierrador still having not selected a representative, UCFA would intervene, which sparked an even bigger conflict between Football Tierrador and UCFA, which nearly led to Tierrador leaving UCFA to join the SCF. Fortunately for the UCFA, these threats were mostly empty, as the Imperial Government would eventually step in and rule that the winner of the 1971 Tierrador Cup would represent the country as the national champion. This would only prove to be even more controversial, as that meant the 1971 National Champion would be the Qaleqa State Cardinals, an OIAA collegiate team, as they defeated UCD Hellraiser, a Northern Coast League club from Qabór, 3–1.

With the Imperial Government's support, Qaleqa State entered the 1972 UCFA Champions League and placed 6th in the 7-team Group B, finishing with a win-draw-loss record of 1–1–4, its only win being a 3–0 shutout over Taça Ceilonia champion S.S.M. Tagaõ, who finished 3rd in the group. In 1973, the TCL became the first known football league in the world to ban draws, and only awarding points to the winners of each match. Originally receiving backlash from fans who argued for the traditional impact that draws had on the sport, the ruling indirectly led to one of the largest average league attendance spikes in league history, jumping from 5,452 in 1972 to 10,680 in 1973. This arguably would be the decision that solidified football's spot as the most popular sport in South Crona, as the ruling attracted millions of more casual fans who had refused to watch as they didn't find the usage of draws to be entertaining. Eventually, both the Premiership and the UCFA would follow suit in 1976, removing draws from their respective competitions. In the 1976 season, Mineros finished with an undefeated 34–0 Premiership record, 7 matches ahead of the second-place club SD Ambaqwe, who finished with a 27–7 record. Mineros would also finish 8–0 in the 1976 UCFA League of Champions group stage, and would go on to win the tournament.

1977–1990

In 1977, the UCFA League of Champions expanded from 14 to 24 clubs, which allowed for more Tierradorian clubs to be selected for the tournament.

Football League system

Level	Total clubs (1,172 +-)	League(s) / division(s)
1	20	Premiership 20 clubs – 4 relegations
2	32	NFL Championship East 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 5 relegations									NFL Championship West 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 5 relegations
3	70	Southern League 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 5 relegations					Northern Coast League 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 5 relegations					Rice Belt League 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 4 relegations				Hemp League 18 clubs – 2 promotions, 4 relegations		Polynesian League 14 clubs – 2 promotions, 4 relegations
4	296 (+89 OIAA Division I-A)	Anbarsnia Premiership 14 clubs – 1 promotion, 2 relegations	Aracadó Division One 18 clubs – 1 promotion, 3 relegations	Auqali Premiership 16 clubs – 1 promotion, 2 relegations	Sonaxa Premiership 16 clubs – 1 promotion, no relegation	Championship of Tawakee 16 clubs – 1 promotion, no relegation	Liga1 Bogocía 15 clubs – 1 promotion, 3 relegations	Las Rozas Premier Division 20 clubs – 1 promotion, 4 relegations	Onancía State Championship 18 clubs – 1 promotion, 3 relegations	Taisgol League One 12 clubs – 1 promotion, no relegation	Tansher First Division 16 clubs – 1 promotion, 2 relegations	Ligue1 Porvaos 14 clubs – 1 promotion, 2 relegations	Qaleqa State Championship 19 clubs – 1 promotion, 3 relegations	Telo1 22 clubs – 1 promotion, 4 relegations	Moscakee Premiership 16 clubs – 1 promotion, 2 relegations	Alcosk First Division 18 clubs – 2 promotions, 2 relegations	Ulunkheria Premiership 20 clubs – 2 promotions, 4 relegations	Ta'alatu'eket Tapkoii 12 clubs – 2 promotions, no relegation	La'upalane Teschego 16 clubs – 2 promotions, no relegation	OIAA Division I-A 89 clubs - No promotion/relegation
5	271 (+91 OIAA Division I-AA)	Anbarsnia Championship 12 clubs – 2 promotions, no relegation	Aracadó Division Two 18 clubs – 2 promotions, 2 relegations	Auqali Championship 16 clubs – 2 promotions, 2 relegations	N/A	N/A	Liga2 Bogocía 16 clubs – 3 promotions, no relegation	Las Rozas Second Division 22 clubs – 4 promotions, 3 relegations	Onancía Second League 20 clubs – 3 promotions, 3 relegations	N/A	Tansher Second Division 18 clubs – 2 promotions, 2 relegations	Ligue2 Porvaos 14 clubs – 2 promotions, no relegation	Qaleqa Second League 20 clubs – 3 promotions, 2 relegations	Telo2 20 clubs – 4 promotions, 3 relegations	Moscakee Championship 17 clubs – 2 promotion, no relegation	Alcosk Second Division 18 clubs – 2 promotions, 2 relegations	Ulunkheria Championship 20 clubs – 4 promotions, 4 relegations	N/A	N/A	OIAA Division I-AA 97 clubs - No promotion/relegation
6	170 (+136 OIAA Division II)	N/A	Aracadó League Three 18 clubs – 2 promotions	Auqali First League 17 clubs – 2 promotions	N/A	N/A	N/A	Las Rozas Third Division 19 clubs – 3 promotions	Onancía Third League 20 clubs – 3 promotions	N/A	Tansher Third Division 18 clubs – 2 promotions	N/A	Qaleqa Second League 18 clubs – 2 promotions	Telo3 20 clubs – 3 promotions	N/A	Alcosk Third Division 20 clubs – 2 promotions	Ulunkheria First League 20 clubs – 4 promotions	N/A	N/A	OIAA Division II 136 clubs - No promotion/relegation
7 and below	14,441	Various Independent Leagues 14,441 clubs in 679 leagues – no promotion
Independent	67	Qabóri Football Association 67 clubs in 5 leagues – no promotion