From the top of the pyramid all the way down to the very lowest levels of English football, supporters always have multiple competitions to enjoy watching their teams play for trophies.

While the most dominant clubs at the summit like Manchester City battle for heaps of silverware, the English Football League (EFL) makes sure that clubs on down the list also have a chance to compete in a genuine manner for titles as well.

Alongside their league matches, Premier League clubs also compete in domestic knockout competitions like the FA Cup and EFL Cup, but for clubs lower down the rankings, they need something else to ensure they have a real opportunity to play for a trophy while the richest sides dominate the knockout tournaments for which they are eligible.

Thus, the leagues organized the EFL Trophy, a competition specifically tailored to lower-league clubs. The Sporting News details what the tournament is, how it’s formatted, who can enter, how it differs from other domestic competitions — and how Premier League sides have still been able to get involved.

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What is the EFL Trophy?

The EFL Trophy, known currently as the Bristol Street Motors Trophy for sponsorship purposes, is a knockout-style competition organized by the EFL that has been contested since its inaugural event in 1981.

In the present EFL Trophy format, only certain lower-league clubs are eligible to participate in the competition, plus academy sides from clubs higher in the English football pyramid, including the Premier League.

There are also key format rules that restrict what players clubs can deploy in the competition during EFL Trophy matches.

What clubs are in the EFL Trophy? Eligibility rules and format

Sixty-four teams are eligible to compete in the EFL Trophy, with the competition open to all clubs in League One (third tier) and League Two (fourth tier), plus Under-21 sides from Premier League and Championship clubs.

Additionally, to maintain the competition’s integrity and keep squads from rotating their lineups too heavily, all starting 11s for EFL clubs in the EFL Trophy must contain four players who meet any one of the following criteria:

• Started the previous first-team fixture, or starts the following first-team fixture
• In the top 10 players at the club for starts in league & domestic cups this season
• Has 40 or more first-team starts in their career for any club, including international matches
• On loan from a Premier League club (or another club with EFL Category One status)

For invited teams, mostly applying to the academy sides, these rules do not apply. Instead, they must have six players in their starting lineup age 21 or under at the start of the current season, and they must have no more than two players aged 21 or over who have made 40 or more senior starts in their career.

Tournament format

The EFL Trophy features a group stage and knockout stage.

In the group stage, all 64 teams are drawn into geographically restricted four-team groups, with eight groups in the Northern section and eight groups in the Southern section.

From there, the top two sides in each group qualify for the Round of 32, and the knockout stage also progresses in a geographically restricted manner until the semifinals, when the remaining four teams are all drawn with the possibility of facing any of the three potential opponents.

Like many of the major knockout trophies in English football, the final of the EFL Trophy is played at Wembley Stadium.

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Is the EFL Trophy different from the EFL Cup?

Yes, the EFL Trophy is a completely separate competition from the more popular EFL Cup (or League Cup as it’s sometimes known, otherwise referred to as the Carabao Cup for sponsorship purposes). They have completely different eligibility rules for entrants as well as different tournament formats.

While the EFL Cup is open to the 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football, the EFL Trophy is for lower-level clubs and higher-level Under-21 sides.

Additionally, the EFL Cup does not have the same kind of restrictions on starting lineups as explained above for the EFL Trophy.

The EFL Cup also does not include a group stage. Instead, it is a single-elimination knockout competition (although the semifinals are traditionally played over two legs).

EFL Trophy past winners

While the restriction to just the lower two levels of professional English football naturally allows for more variance in winner from year to year, it is still dominated by teams found higher up the league ladder.

We can see clear separation in competitive abilities between the third and fourth tier of the football pyramid. Indeed, a fourth-tier club has won the EFL Trophy on just six occasions in the tournament’s history.

The most successful club in EFL Trophy history is Bristol City, the only side to win the competition three different times, while 12 other clubs have won it twice. While lifting this trophy is a recognizable honor, winning it multiple times also suggests the club has been stuck in the lower levels of English professional football long enough to compete in it regularly, which isn’t exactly a badge of honor.

Wrexham won this competition back in 2005, defeating Southend United 2-0 in the final.

Fourth-tier winners are italicized in the table below. Brackets () denote total number of trophy wins.

* EFL League One was known as Division Three from 1958-1992 and as Division Two from 1992-2004, while EFL League Two was known as Division Four from 1958-1992 and Division Three from 1992-2004.
** The EFL Trophy allowed entry to clubs in the second tier of English football for the first two seasons of competition, until moving to the current entry restrictions for the 1983/84 tournament.