Football clubs are supposed to be rooted in place: the ground, the streets around it, the people who walk there every matchday for years and years.

Yet history is full of teams who packed up and left. Some moved a few miles to chase bigger crowds, others crossed counties for a business opportunity, and a handful were driven out by war.

The consequences range from the making of a global superpower to the birth of a fan-owned phoenix club.

Here are 10 football clubs that relocated, and why their moves still matter.

Millwall – Isle of Dogs to New Cross (1910)

Millwall's name is the giveaway. The club was formed in 1885 by workers at JT Morton's canning factory in the Millwall area of the Isle of Dogs, in east London. After cycling through four grounds on the island in 25 years, with little room to grow and few residents to draw on, the club crossed the Thames in 1910 to The Den in New Cross, south-east London.

The Lions have stayed south of the river ever since, moving to the New Den in Bermondsey in 1993, yet the east London name has stuck for more than a century.

Arsenal – Plumstead to Highbury (1913)

The most consequential relocation in English football. Woolwich Arsenal were dying in Plumstead: isolated, hard to reach and drawing average crowds below 10,000 during the worst season in their history. Chairman Henry Norris, who had rescued the club from extinction in 1910, gambled on a site at Gillespie Road in Islington, right beside an Underground station.

Tottenham objected furiously to a rival landing on their doorstep and appealed to the Football League, but lost. Arsenal played their first game at Highbury in September 1913, and one of football's fiercest rivalries was born.

South Shields – South Shields to Gateshead (1930)

Gateshead's Football League story actually began in South Shields. Founded as South Shields Adelaide in 1899, the club joined the League in 1919 but, buckling under financial problems, moved up the Tyne to Redheugh Park in 1930 and took the name of its new town.

More than 15,000 turned up for the first game. Remarkably, history repeated itself. The club formed to fill the void in South Shields was itself moved to Gateshead in 1974, becoming Gateshead United. Two towns, the same heartbreak, twice in 44 years.

Qarabağ – Agdam to Baku (1993)

Qarabağ are a club without a hometown. Founded in Agdam, they were forced out in 1993 when Armenian forces captured the city during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, leaving their Imarat Stadium in ruins and Agdam a ghost town. That same summer, the displaced club were crowned champions of Azerbaijan, with little appetite for celebration.

Relocated to the capital, Baku, Qarabağ became a symbol for those uprooted by the conflict and, in 2017, the first Azerbaijani side to reach the Champions League group stage. Agdam returned to Azerbaijani control in 2020, but the club remains in Baku.

Meadowbank Thistle – Edinburgh to Livingston (1995)

Livingston began life as Ferranti Thistle, the works team of an Edinburgh electronics firm. Barred from using a company name on entering the Scottish League in 1974, they became Meadowbank Thistle and played at the city's Commonwealth Games athletics stadium, where crowds never materialised. In 1995 the club moved west to the new town of Livingston and took its name.

The gamble paid off spectacularly. Livi reached the top flight, finished third behind Celtic and Rangers in their maiden season there to qualify for the UEFA Cup, then lifted the League Cup in 2004.

Wimbledon – London to Milton Keynes (2003)

English football's most notorious relocation. Wimbledon's rise from non-League to FA Cup winners in 1988 was the stuff of legend, but by the early 2000s the 'Crazy Gang' were tenants at Selhurst Park. In May 2002, an FA-appointed independent commission voted two-to-one to allow a move of roughly 60 miles north to Milton Keynes.

Supporters founded AFC Wimbledon within days. The relocated club played its first match in Milton Keynes in September 2003 and was renamed MK Dons in 2004, while AFC Wimbledon climbed into the Football League and returned to Plough Lane in 2020.

San Jose Earthquakes – San Jose to Houston (2005)

Franchise relocation is routine in American sport, but this one came with a twist. The San Jose Earthquakes had won the MLS Cup in 2001 and 2003, yet owners AEG could not secure a soccer-specific stadium. So in December 2005, the players and head coach Dominic Kinnear were shipped to Texas to become the Houston Dynamo.

The new club won MLS Cup in each of its first two seasons. Crucially, the Earthquakes' name and records stayed behind in San Jose, allowing the club to return as an expansion side in 2008.

Coventry City – Coventry to Northampton and Birmingham (2013 and 2019)

Coventry City never formally left Coventry, but twice their 'home' games were staged elsewhere. A rent dispute with the owners of the Ricoh Arena forced the Sky Blues to Northampton Town's Sixfields for the 2013-14 season, more than 30 miles away and the first time in 130 years they had played a home fixture outside the city.

Fans boycotted in their thousands. A second dispute, with new landlords Wasps, sent them to Birmingham City's St Andrew's from 2019 to 2021. The happy ending came in April 2026, when Frank Lampard led Coventry back to the Premier League after 25 years away.

Shakhtar Donetsk – Donetsk to Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv (2014)

Shakhtar Donetsk have not played a home game in Donetsk since 2014. When the Russian-backed conflict engulfed the Donbas, their gleaming Donbas Arena, a Euro 2012 venue, was damaged by shelling and the club began an exile that took them first to Lviv, around 1,000 kilometres west, then to Kharkiv and Kyiv.

Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 pushed their European home fixtures out of Ukraine altogether. Remarkably, the wandering club kept winning, reaching European semi-finals in 2016 and 2020 while continuing to dominate domestically.

Monarcas Morelia – Morelia to Mazatlán (2020)

Not since Wimbledon had a move provoked such outrage. In June 2020, with football halted by the pandemic, owners Grupo Salinas relocated Monarcas Morelia's Liga MX franchise to the Pacific coast city of Mazatlán, where a new stadium awaited. The announcement came two days before the club's 70th anniversary.

More than 7,000 fans defied stay-at-home orders to protest, and former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, a Morelia native, publicly condemned the plan. The franchise became Mazatlán FC, while a rebooted Atlético Morelia started again in the second tier.