The
English football league system, also known as the
football pyramid, is a series of
interconnected leagues for men's association football clubs in England, with six teams from
Wales and one from
Guernsey also competing. The system has a hierarchical format with
promotion and relegation between leagues at different levels, allowing even the smallest club the hypothetical possibility of ultimately rising to the very top of the system. There are more than 140 individual leagues, containing more than 480 divisions. The exact number of clubs varies from year to year as clubs join and leave leagues or fold altogether, but an estimated average of 15 clubs per division implies that more than 7,000 teams of nearly 5,300 clubs are members of a league in the English men's football league system.