Which team has played the opening game of the Premier League the most times?

After a few months’ break, the Premier League is back! Manchester United and Fulham will play this season’s opener in Old Trafford this Friday, August 16, with the kick-off scheduled for 3 pm E.T.

Since the creation of the Premier League format in 1992, we have had memorable matches in the opening week, such as Liverpool’s 4-3 victory against a newly promoted Leeds United in the 2020/21 season.

Then there was Leicester City’s 4-2 win against Sunderland in the 2015/16 season, which was the first step towards their impressive title campaign. If we want to look for less recent matches, we can travel back to the 1997/98 season, when former English player Dion Dublin was the hattrick hero in Coventry’s outstanding 3-2 victory against Chelsea.

Today, we will focus on the opening match, or matches, considering that Premier League openers from 1992 until 2002 and from 2011 til 2012 were scheduled for the same time. There’s been a large number of soccer teams who can boast about playing the opener of the Premier League; we have teams from Swindon Town, who played only one opener (against Sheffield United in 1993), to Wimbledon FC’s unexpected eight opening games, the last one being their 3-2 win against Watford in 1999.

Let’s look at the teams that have played the most opening games in the Premier League.

Which teams have played the most opening games in the Premier League?

Curiously, at the top, we have a triple tie. Let’s first look at the teams that are slightly below the table because we also have a tie between four historic clubs: Manchester United, Everton, Aston Villa, and Leeds, all of them with 11.

Although Leeds is in the Championship, England’s second division, it is undeniable that the three-time league winners have always been part of English football history; their first opening game was in the 1992 season against Wimbledon; Man United, the 20-time league champions, will play their eleventh opener against Fulham this Friday; The Red devils were, curiously, Everton’s last opening game rival in the 2005/06 season, while Aston Villa’s last opener was their 0-1 loss against West Ham in 2012.

The three teams that have performed most in the Premier League opening match are part of the Big Six: Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham, tied at the top with 14 games.

The Gunners’ first Premier League opener was in the 1992 season when they lost 2-4 against Norwich. Their last was in 2022 when Mikel Arteta’s side beat Crystal Palace 2-0. The Spurs’ last Premier League opener was their 1-0 loss in Old Trafford against Manchester United in the 2015/16 season. Despite the defeat, Tottenham qualified for the Champions League after finishing third in the table.

Liverpool’s first opening game was against Sheffield Wednesday, now a second-tier club, in 1993. The Reds won the game 2-0 but finished eighth on the table with 60 points. A different case was their last opening game against Norwich in the 2019/20 season, where Jurgen Klopp’s side thrashed their rivals 4-1 and lifted the Premier League trophy with 99 points.