Lincoln Red Imps F.C.

Lincoln Red Imps Football Club is a professional association football club from Gibraltar. They play in the Gibraltar National League, and share Victoria Stadium with all other clubs in the territory. They are the country's record champion with 27 league titles, including fourteen consecutive titles between 2003 and 2016, and in 2014 were the first team to represent Gibraltar in the UEFA Champions League's qualifying stage. In August 2021, Lincoln became the first club from Gibraltar to ever reach the group stages of a European club competition after defeating the Latvian champions Riga FC in the play-off round of the UEFA Europa Conference League. The club holds the world record for treble trophies won in a season with 12 trebles won. They also hold the record for Europe's longest chronological unbeaten league run of 88 matches over 1,959 days from May 2009 to September 2014. History The football club was first formed in 1976 by Charles Polson and Charles Head, the latter managing the team. A group of players associated to the old Police youth team called the "Blue Batons" and complemented by players that had been released by Glacis United and St Jago's joined forces to form the first Lincoln team that played in the Gibraltar fourth division as a youth team. The team was named after Lincoln City FC, who are nicknamed the "Imps" after the legend of the Lincoln Imp. Lincoln Red Imps received their name after they were sponsored by Reg Brealey, the former Sheffield United chairman and Lincoln resident who is friends with Charles Polson. When this Lincoln team became old enough to play Senior Football, it was decided to place the young team into the GFA second division. The team started to climb to the top in the second division in the season 1981–82 winning the league, the division cup and gaining promotion to the GFA's first division after only one season. The next year Lincoln finished in mid table in the first division. In 1983–84 Lincoln won the league and promotion to the Gibraltar Premier Division.