The Double

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The Double is a term in football, which refers to winning a country's top division and its main cup competition in the same season. It can also mean beating a team both home and away in the same league season.

In English football, it means traditionally winning both the top League (currently the FA Premier League and previously the Football League First Division) and the FA Cup in the same season. However, other major trophies won in combination in the same season are also often referred to as Doubles or Trebles.

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List of teams who won¹ The Double in England:

The Aston Villa team of 1897 that won The Double.
The Aston Villa team of 1897 that won The Double.

During the first half of the 20th century, many commentators came to believe that winning the league and cup double was impossible in the modern game, partially because of the number of teams over the decades who had come close but ultimately failed to achieve the feat, often supposedly because of fixture congestion. Tottenham's double in 1961, the first of the modern era, was therefore considered at the time to be a particularly remarkable achievement which proved the conventional wisdom wrong. However the double still remained a relatively rare achievement prior to the mid-1990s.

Since the advent of the Premier League in 1992, the number of instances of clubs achieving the double has doubled, and hence has devalued the rarity value of the achievement since it succinctly indicates the on-field effect of the greatly increased spending power of a very few major clubs in comparison to the majority of competing clubs at the top level.

Arsenal and Manchester United share the record of three double wins each. Arsenal are the only club to win a double in more than one decade (1970s, 1990s and 2000s). United's three doubles in the 1990s illustrates their domination of English football at that time.

A rarer, and less coveted, double in English domestic football is that of winning the League championship and the League Cup. This feat was first achieved in 1978 by Nottingham Forest. Liverpool achieved this double no less than three times in succession (1982, 1983 and 1984). The last of these was won with the European Cup, making it a lesser but nonetheless notable treble. Despite their dominance of the Premier League in the 1990s, Manchester United never managed to accomplish this double, as they usually fielded their reserves in the League Cup until 2005-2006; their closest effort was in 1993/1994, where they won the League and FA Cup, but lost the League Cup final to Aston Villa. The latest team to achieve it were Chelsea in 2005 when they won the English Premier League and League Cup.

The FA Cup and League Cup double was achieved by Arsenal in 1993, when they beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in both games. In 2001, Liverpool achieved this double along with the UEFA Cup as part of their Cup treble. In 2007, Chelsea F.C. also completed the Cup Double.

Leeds United were the first English team to win a double involving European and domestic trophies. It was in 1968 when Leeds won the Football League Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup[1]. Chelsea also did a double involving a European Cup in 1998, winning the Cup Winners' Cup and the League Cup.

Aberdeen won their first and only European double in season 1982-83 when first off they captured the European Cup Winners Cup by beating Real Madrid 2-1 in Gothenburg, and 10 days later they captured the Scottish Cup with a last gasp 1-0 win over Rangers in the final. Aberdeen also went on to capture the European Super Cup at the end of 1983 to cap an unofficial treble winning year, but not in the same season.

Winning the League and Champions League is considered another type of double. This was achieved by AC Milan in 1994, Ajax Amsterdam in 1995, Bayern Munich in 2001, Porto in 2004 and Barcelona in 2006.

A great many sides over the years have come close to winning the coveted English league and F.A. Cup double but narrowly failed to do so by losing one or both of the trophies at the end of the season.

The full list of these nearly men is:

  • Manchester City in 1904, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Newcastle United in 1905, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Sunderland in 1913, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Aston Villa in 1913, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Huddersfield Town in 1928, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Arsenal in 1932, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1939, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • West Bromwich Albion in 1954, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Manchester United in 1957, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1960, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Burnley in 1962, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Leeds United in 1965, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Leeds United in 1970, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Leeds United in 1972, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Liverpool in 1974, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Liverpool in 1977, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Everton in 1985, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Everton in 1986, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Liverpool in 1988, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Liverpool in 1989, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Manchester United in 1995, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Arsenal in 2001, league championship runners-up/FA Cup runners-up
  • Arsenal in 2003, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Arsenal in 2005, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners
  • Manchester United in 2007, league champions/FA Cup runners-up
  • Chelsea in 2007, league championship runners-up/FA Cup winners

The term is used outside of English football as well. One notable double-winning team in 2006 was Bayern Munich in Germany, which became the first team in the country's history to successfully defend a double. Inter Milan in Italy earned the double in an unusual manner in the same season, being awarded the Serie A title to go along with their on-field win in the Coppa Italia after initial league champions Juventus were stripped of the title in the aftermath of the 2006 Serie A scandal.

CSKA Moscow in Russia won the Russian Cup and Premier League in 2005, and the Urawa Reds won a double in Japan in 2006.

The all-time leader for domestic doubles is Linfield, from Northern Ireland, United Kingdom — with 19 as of May 2007.

D.C. United won the first American double of the MLS Cup and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 1996, the Chicago Fire won both in 1998, as did the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2005. D.C. United won 2 doubles consiting of the MLS Cup and MLS Supporters Shield in 1997 and 1999. Kansas City Wizards won the same double in 2000, and the Los Angeles Galaxy won both trophies in 2002.

Main article: The Double (Luxembourg)

The Double in Luxembourgian football involves winning the Luxembourg Cup and the National Division in the same season. Since Luxembourgian football has no other senior tournaments, and Luxembourgian clubs rarely progress far in European competition, a Double marks the ultimate achievement by a Luxembourgian club. It has been completed twenty-two times: eight of which by Jeunesse Esch.

West Bromwich Albion achieved a unique "Double" in 1931 when they became the first team to win FA Cup and promotion to the higher league in the same season (from Second Division, today's Championship to First Division, today's Premiership). 76 years later, no other team has yet achieved this feat.

Club Nation Number of
doubles
Linfield Flag of Northern Ireland Northern Ireland 19
Rangers Flag of Scotland Scotland 17
Celtic Flag of Scotland Scotland 13
Al-Ahly Flag of Egypt Egypt 13
Levski Sofia Flag of Bulgaria Bulgaria 13
Olympiakos Flag of Greece Greece 12
HB Flag of the Faroe Islands Faroe Islands 12
Muharraq Club Flag of Bahrain Bahrain 12
CSKA Sofia Flag of Bulgaria Bulgaria 10
Dinamo Kyiv Flag of Ukraine Ukraine 10
Red Star Belgrade Flag of Serbia Serbia  9
Jeunesse Esch Flag of Luxembourg Luxembourg  8

  1. ^ Chelsea also won the League Cup and the FA cup in 2007. "Football : Season Details : 1968" krysstal.com (accessed 17th Oct 2006)
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