The National League Cup is an annual

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

competition in

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The National League Cup is open to clubs playing in the

National League National League often refers to: *National League (baseball), one of the two baseball leagues constituting Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada *National League (division), the fifth division of the English football (soccer) system ...

and, since its revival in 2024, professional under-21 teams playing in the

Premier League 2 The Professional Development League is a system of Football in England, English youth association football, football leagues that are managed, organised and controlled by the Premier League or by the Football League. It was introduced by the Th ...

History

The competition was formed for the inaugural season of what was then called the Alliance Premier League, in 1979–80 and existed for twenty-two seasons before being axed at the end of the 2000–01 season. It was briefly reformed for the 2004–05 season, in the form of the Conference Challenge Cup, but following a poor response it was again agreed not to renew the competition for the next season. With the transfer of sponsorship of the Conference to Blue Square for the start of the 2007–08 season two seasons later, the re-introduction of the competition was announced, scheduled to commence that year. On 23 June 2009, the Conference League Cup's sponsor, Setanta's GB division, went into

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

and ceased broadcasting. In the 2024–25 season, the competition was revived as the 32-team National League Cup, with 16 National League clubs and 16 under-21 teams from Premier League 2.

Format

The competition was a

knockout tournament A single-elimination knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of a match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, w ...

with pairings drawn at random – like the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...

there is a minimal form of seeding, in that members of the (higher-level)

Conference National The National League, officially known as Vanarama National League for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in England. The National League is the first division of the National League (English football), National Le ...

entered together at a later stage in the tournament, and the draw for each round took place after the completion of the round before. The revived edition for 2024–25 consists of four groups of four National League and four Premier League 2 teams each, with each National League team playing four home games against the under-21 teams in their group. The top 2 teams from each group advance to the quarter-finals.

Winners

Source: (note: source does not list finals for 1986–87 to 1988–89)

References

External links

Setanta Shield results 2007–08
on BBC Sport
Setanta Shield results 2008–09
on BBC Sport {{Men's football in England +League Cup