Bradford City AFC (nicknamed The Bantams, and previously The Paraders or The Citizens) is an English football team from the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire.The Bantams nickname reflects the claret and amber colours of the club's strip.  It was fromed in 1903 when Manningham Rugby Club decided to form a professional football team which would play at their ground, Valley Parade. The club was instantly elected into Division Two of the Football League despite not having played a previous game and having no players. They won the Division Two championship in 1908 and gained promotion to Division One. In 1911 City finished fifth in Division One, their highest ever placing and won the FA Cup, beating the favourites Newcastle United 1-0 in a replay. After relegation in 1922 from Division One, the club spent 77 years outside the top flight.  They were relegated into Division Three (North) in 1927. After a temporary recovery they would spent 23 years in Division Three (North) from 1937. Although the club returned to Division Two only two years later, it would be a temporary recovery and in 1937 they found themselves back in Division Three (North) where they would remain for 23 years  before being relegated to Division Four in 1961. This period coincided with numerous financial crises. City spent much of the next twenty years bouncing between the third and forth divisions.   

The club’s fortunes improved during the early 1980s and in 1985 they secured promotion back to the Second Division.  On 11 May 1985, tragedy struck when the wooden Main Stand was engulfed in flames and fifty-six fans died in the inferno. The match between Bradford City and Lincoln City, the final game of that season, had started in a celebratory atmosphere with the home team receiving the Third Division championship trophy. It was the first piece of league silverware that the club had captured since they won the Division Three (North) title 56 years earlier, 11,076 supporters were in the ground. It was nearly double the season's average of 6,610 and included 3,000 fans in the ground's main stand. In the late Nineties, City climbed up from Nationwide Division Two (the old third Division) all the way to the Premier Division in 1999.  City stayed up, with a then record low of 36 points, in the first season in the Premiership but relegation followed the following season. Since then a series of financial crises have pushed the club to the brink of closure. The financial pressures resulted in two more relegations to League Two, the bottom tier of English football.  Things took a dramatic turn for the better in 2013-14 when City reached the Capital One League Cup final after knocking out Wigan Athletic, Arsenal and Aston Villa on the way. Although they were beaten by Swansea City in the final, they were the first fourth-tier club to reach a Wembley final, earning £2.3m in the process. In the same season, they returned to Wembley for the playoff final and won promotion to League One with a 3–0 win over Northampton Town.