List of Scottish football champions

Scottish football champions
Founded
1890
Number of Teams
12
Current Champions
Rangers
Country
Scotland
Most successful club
Rangers (53 times champions, including 1 shared)

The Scottish football champions are the winners of the highest league in Scottish football, namely the Scottish Football League from 1890 until 1998 and the Scottish Premier League thereafter.

The Scottish Football League was established in 1890, initially as an amateur league until professionalism in Scottish football was legalised in 1893.^[1] At the end of the first season Dumbarton and Rangers finished level on points at the top of the table. The rules in force at the time required that the teams contest a play-off match for the championship, which finished in a 2–2 draw, and the first ever championship was thus shared between two clubs, the only occasion on which this has happened.^[2] In 1893 a Second Division was formed, with the existing single division renamed the First Division. Although there were several short spells when a third division was created, the two-division structure remained largely in place until 1975, when a major re-organisation of the league led to a new three-tier set-up and the creation of a new Premier Division at the highest level. The league continued during the First World War but was suspended during the Second World War.^[3] In 1998, the teams then in the Premier Division broke away to form the Scottish Premier League, which supplanted the Premier Division as the highest level of football in Scotland.^[4]

Throughout its existence the championship of Scottish football has been dominated by two Glasgow clubs, Rangers and Celtic, the so-called "Old Firm", who have claimed 53 and 42 league titles respectively as of 2010. No other club has won the title on more than four occasions, with the most recent club outside the Old Firm to win the title being Aberdeen in the 1984–85 season. Each of the Old Firm clubs has at one time managed a run of nine consecutive championships, Celtic from 1966 to 1974 and Rangers from 1989 to 1997. The Old Firm's longest period of unbroken dominance came between 1904 and 1931 when the two clubs between them won 27 consecutive titles. Each of the two clubs has also claimed Scotland's version of The Double on many occasions, by winning the league and the Scottish Cup in the same season.^[5] Rangers have won the most Doubles with sixteen as of 2010, more than any other club in the world apart from Northern Ireland's Linfield.^[6] Each club has also won a Double and added the Scottish League Cup to make it a Treble.^[7] In the 1966–67 season Celtic took all three domestic trophies and also won the European Cup to complete the only Quadruple to date.^[8]

Champions

Key:

Scottish League (1890–1893)

Scottish League First Division (1893–1975)

Scottish League Premier Division (1975–1998)

Scottish Premier League (1998–present)

Total titles won

Eleven clubs have been champions. Third Lanark are the only one no longer active since the demise of the original club in 1967.

Total titles won by town or city

Eleven clubs have been champions, from a total of seven towns and cities, although only 18 of the 114 championship titles have been won by teams from outside Glasgow.

References