The English Football League: A Season of Giant-Killings, Wembley Dreams, and the Carabao Cup

The English Football League offers a uniquely demanding and dynamic experience for fans of the sport. Unlike the leagues in North America, where a bad season can lead to relegation, the EFL operates within a promotion-and-relegation pyramid where clubs vie for survival, progression, or advancement. In this system of 72 clubs spanning the Championship, League One, and League Two, each season brings a spectrum of ambitions: some teams chase a return to the Premier League, others seek historic breakthroughs, and many simply aim to avoid the drop.

The pressure creates a week-to-week tension that newcomers can appreciate. The Championship promotion race often feels like a season-long audition for the top flight, with playoff pressure adding further intensity. The Carabao Cup then provides lower-league clubs the chance to engineer memorable upsets. Relegation battles ensure that even the bottom of the table holds real drama.

How to watch: Key dates

Stream the English Football League all season long on Paramount+, and catch all the latest news and action on CBS Sports Golazo Network.

• EFL Championship: Friday, Aug. 14 – Wolves vs. Blackburn Rovers, 3 p.m. ET
• EFL League One: Saturday, Aug. 15, 7:30 a.m. ET
• EFL League Two: Saturday, Aug. 15, 7:30 a.m. ET
• Carabao Cup (When non-European Premier League teams enter): Week of August 24
• Carabao Cup (When European Premier League teams enter): Week of Sept. 7 and Sept. 14
• Carabao Cup final: Sunday, March 21

Promotion and relegation chaos

Across the Championship, League One, and League Two, 72 clubs spend every season vying to climb, stay put, or avoid sliding further down the table. The most accessible entry point for newcomers is the Championship, the second tier of English soccer and the final step before the Premier League. Each season, three clubs earn promotion: the top two advance automatically, while the teams finishing third through eighth battle in an expanded playoff format for the final promotion spot. This playoff race funnels clubs to Wembley, where they compete for a lucrative prize that, over multiple seasons, can reach an estimated $275 million for the club finishing third. At the other end of the table, three clubs face relegation to League One.

The relegated three

At the conclusion of last season, West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Burnley all dropped into the Championship, and each club is striving to bounce straight back. However, this is a grind that can break even even well-resourced clubs. West Ham sold plenty this summer, but retaining Jarrod Bowen — the star of their Premier League years and an occasional England international — is the strongest signal that the Hammers believe their stay will be brief. Wolves made a statement of their own by bringing Raúl Jiménez back on a free transfer from Fulham. Having just led Mexico at the World Cup, he will attempt to drag Wolves back to the top flight. This is a club he first joined in 2018-19, the season after their last promotion. Burnley have become the prototypical yo-yo club, too strong for the Championship but not quite strong enough to compete in the Premier League, which places them squarely in the mix by default. They won’t have it to themselves.

Chasing the pack

Southampton opens the season with a four-point deduction following the Spygate scandal that ousted them from last season’s playoff final and nearly cost head coach Tonda Eckert his job. Yet four points may not be sufficient to keep one of the division’s most talented squads from reaching the top six. Middlesbrough, with its sizable American contingent, is chasing promotion with extra motivation: having been reinstated into last season’s playoff final after Southampton’s expulsion, they fell to a stoppage-time Hull City winner at Wembley, extending a miserable record at the national stadium that makes automatic promotion the far safer route. Wrexham fell just short of the playoffs last season — a finish that would have secured them entry under this season’s expanded format — but even with Phil Parkinson’s steady hand, they feel a step behind the clubs above them. Birmingham City are building something real, and Norwich City expect to be in the conversation too.

That expanded field alters the psychology of the whole division. With the playoffs now stretched to a top-eight finish, a full third of the Championship can end the season pointing to some kind of success: automatic promotion, advancing through the playoffs, a day out at Wembley, or simply cracking the top eight. More teams remain alive deeper into the spring, and more fanbases get to believe. Still, do the math: that’s eight named contenders for three promotion spots — before reaching Sheffield United and Millwall, playoff participants last season now facing an uphill climb back. Stretch that across a 46-match season and you’ll see why the Championship is so hard to escape.

Eyes on young Americans

There’s a bit more to the Championship than just Middlesbrough. The promotion chasers have recently added Max Arfsten and Sebastian Berhalter, with Berhalter announcing himself and picking up an assist against Wrexham in the first round of the EFL Cup. The pair joins Aidan Morris to form an American core at a club still stinging from last season’s Wembley defeat — and determined to make sure there’s no playoff final to lose this time.

Boro aren’t the only reason USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino will be watching the Championship. Patrick Agyemang’s ACL tear will sideline him for a while, but his 10 goals and three assists in his debut season show exactly what Derby County are missing — and how quickly he could matter once he returns. George Campbell anchors West Brom’s defense, and Kristoffer Lund has landed at Birmingham City, where Tom Brady’s ownership group has built a club with real Premier League ambition. At 24, Lund is making exactly the kind of move that can put a player back on the USMNT radar. Damion Downs will fight for a regular role at promotion-minded Southampton, while Charlie Kelman looks to take another step forward at Charlton Athletic.

The Championship-to-USMNT pipeline is well established by now — the league’s physicality translates naturally from MLS, smoothing the adjustment for Americans crossing over. Don’t be surprised if this list is longer by May.

It’s not just Wrexham in Wales

One quirk of the EFL for newcomers getting acclimated: it isn’t strictly English. With Cardiff City promoted back from League One, the Championship now houses three Welsh clubs, with Swansea City and Wrexham also in the fold. Cardiff are the traditional power, Swansea have bounced in and out of the Premier League, and Wrexham are the newcomers whose Hollywood-backed climb from non-league to the second tier ranks among the sport’s great modern success stories. But the final step is the steepest one. In the lower divisions, Wrexham could simply outspend the competition, thanks to their support from Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, carrying one of the most valuable squads at every level they passed through.

In the Championship, they rank just 13th in squad value, behind Swansea in ninth, though comfortably ahead of Cardiff, whose slide to League One forced a squad teardown that leaves them 22nd. No Welsh club has played in the Premier League since Cardiff went down in 2018-19, but with all three aiming to establish themselves as Championship regulars, the top flight may not stay England-only for much longer.

The fallen giants

A decade after their 5,000-to-1 Premier League title, Leicester City will play in League One. They are just the fifth club ever to suffer back-to-back relegations into the third tier. There’s always a road back, as Sunderland proved with their own League One sojourn before returning to the Premier League, but history says the wheels can come off entirely when historic clubs linger down there. The Championship math is brutal: almost nobody turns a profit because the whole point is to spend your way up, and when promotion doesn’t come before the parachute payments run out, the spiral begins. League One’s tighter financial restrictions only squeeze harder, punishing clubs built to spend like they no longer can. Leicester’s best asset is an academy that has long been among England’s most productive. But it needs to produce now, and not in three years.

They’ll have company in the third tier. Luton Town were in the Premier League as recently as 2023-24, while Sheffield Wednesday are finally emerging from a financial nightmare that saw them docked 18 points last season — 12 for entering administration, six more for failing to pay players and staff — before new American owners rescued the club in May and spared them a further 15-point deduction to start this campaign. Further down the pyramid, Salford City — the fourth-tier project overseen by Manchester United’s Class of ’92 — will try to finally make good on their potential, with EFL-proven attackers Macauley Langstaff and Luke Molyneux giving them the firepower to climb. York City arrive in League Two from the National League intent on pushing them, having locked up star striker Josh Stones to an extension after his 17 goals fired their promotion. At this level, knowing where the goals will come from is half the battle — and York, at least, already have their answer.

Carabao Cup: Home of the cupsets

The Carabao Cup — a knockout tournament that brings together clubs from the Premier League, Championship, League One, and League Two — is the great equalizer.

For new fans, it’s one of the quickest ways to grasp the scale of English soccer. In one week, a lower-league club is grinding through a promotion race; in the next, it’s drawn against a Premier League giant under the lights. And sometimes the giant loses, as Manchester United found out the hard way at League Two Grimsby Town in August 2025.

Premier League clubs enter after the competition begins — those without European commitments join in Round Two, and clubs playing in Europe arrive in Round Three. The early rounds are often regionalized, producing local derbies, awkward away trips, and a cup-night atmosphere unlike anything in league play.

For Premier League sides, the Carabao Cup offers a chance for rotation — minutes for young players and a shot at early-season silverware. For EFL clubs, the stakes are bigger: a giant-killing “cupset,” a money-spinning home draw, a showcase for emerging talent, or a road to Wembley like the one fourth-tier Bradford City rode all the way to the 2013 final.

This season’s edition arrives loaded with storylines of its own. It was the World Cup of Erling Haaland, and soon he’ll grace this tournament too. With Manchester City in the Champions League, they don’t enter until the third round, when new manager Enzo Maresca inherits the strange assignment of defending a trophy Pep Guardiola won on his way out. City arrive as reigning champions after beating Arsenal in last season’s final, chasing a 10th title that would pull them level with Liverpool’s all-time record. Add a new-look Tottenham under Roberto De Zerbi and a Liverpool side finding its footing under Andoni Iraola, and the Premier League entrants bring no shortage of intrigue.

Even when the biggest names rest, the Carabao Cup rewards watching. It’s where squad players force their way into a manager’s plans and where teenagers make their case — nobody proved that more than Nico O’Reilly, whose two goals won City last season’s final. This year, keep an eye on Arsenal’s Max Dowman, who is already an impact player at 17. He can use cup nights to show Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta he’s undroppable, especially with new wing signing Christos Tzolis still settling in and minutes there for the taking.

And then there’s the magic of the cup itself — the next Grimsby lurking somewhere in the bracket, waiting to remind a Premier League club that it can’t be overlooked. Whether it’s the World Cup stars you already love or the stars of tomorrow, the Carabao Cup has them all.

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