The New Saints

There is no stranger biography in British football. Born in 1959 as Llansantffraid FC, the club of a Welsh village of a thousand souls, it won the Welsh Cup in 1996 and went to Europe. The following year it made history by selling its own name: a 250 thousand pound sponsorship turned it into Total Network Solutions FC, the first British club named after a company. In 2003 it merged with Oswestry Town, a club from the English side of the border, and when the sponsor vanished in 2006 the fans chose The New Saints, keeping the TNS initials. The result: a club based in England, record champions of Wales, with the Welsh dragon and a lion on its crest. In 2016 it entered the Guinness Book with 27 consecutive wins, breaking the world record of Cruyff's great Ajax, and in 2024/25 it made history again as the first Welsh club to reach a European league phase, in the Conference League. From the old saints of Llansantffraid came some New Saints who never stop praying in green and white.