Cardiff City and Swansea City’s long-running rivalry was born out of geographical location but made in the EFL in recent times.
Having clocked over 100 fiercely contested fixtures, the two South Wales-based cities will meet once again in the Sky Bet Championship this weekend.
The teams involved
The South Wales derby has made history between the two teams, most notably when Cardiff and Swansea met for the first time in the Premier League in 2013. But more recently, the Championship has hosted a handful of hotly contested derby games in SA1.
Also in the vicinity, Newport County fall under the South Wales umbrella, although the Exiles have formed rivalries with nearby League Two teams, having only crossed paths with the Championship teams in friendly encounters Carabao Cup ties of late.
Club connections
Recently retired Wayne Routledge, who announced he would be hanging up his boots earlier in the week, is known to both Cardiff and Swansea fans.
The attacker has reached over a decade of service for Swansea, but he was Cardiff’s first, having been loaned out to the Bluebirds in 2008/09 from then-parent club Aston Villa, and after making an immediate impression, the Club made an attempt to secure his signature on a permanent basis, although the deal failed to materialise.
Routledge soon cemented himself as a Swansea fans’ favourite after making the switch to the Swansea.com Stadium in the summer of 2011, inking a three-year contract and now registered as the Club’s longest-serving player.
Last time out
Both vying for promotion, Cardiff and Swansea met in the Championship in 2019/20 for the first time since the two sides were in the Premier League in 2013/14, before the Bluebirds suffered relegation, finishing rock bottom of the rankings.
The two Clubs then narrowly missed one another, like two ships passing in the night, when Cardiff won promotion back to the Premier League under Neil Warnock in 2017/18, whilst Swansea dropped back into the Championship, finishing 18th.
And after a single season in the Premier League, Cardiff re-joined their Welsh nemesis in the Championship.
Nevertheless, Mick McCarthy’s Cardiff maintained the edge over rivals Swansea when the two sides last met in March 2021, with Aden Flint’s solitary strike separating the two sides in the Championship.