[1] The club's home ground is the Brandywell Stadium and the players wear red and white striped shirts from which their nickname, the Candystripes, derives.

[4] After spending the majority of its time in the League of Ireland in the Premier Division, the club was expelled in November 2009 when it was discovered there were secondary, unofficial contracts with players.

[7][8] Derry City was granted entry into the Irish League in 1929 as professionals and was given permission by the Londonderry Corporation to use the municipal Brandywell Stadium.

With no other feasible local ground available, Derry had to travel to the majority unionist town of Coleraine, over 30 miles (48 km) away, to play its "home" games at the Showgrounds.

The move required special dispensation from the IFA and FIFA, but eventually Derry was admitted to the league's new First Division for 1985, joining as semi-professionals.

[27] Derry played high-profile friendlies against clubs such as Celtic,[28] Manchester United,[29] Barcelona[30] and Real Madrid[31] to raise extra money.

This helped keep the club in operation, but difficulties remained and Derry nearly lost its Premier Division place in 2003 when it finished ninth and had to contest a two-legged relegation-promotion play-off with local rivals, Finn Harps.

[citation needed] The club, by owing huge debts, was expelled from the League of Ireland by the FAI in November 2009 for breaching the Participation Agreement and dissolved, but a new Derry club using the "Derry City" name joined for 2010 – with the FAI allowing it into the First Division[5][45] By January 2010 with a new board, the new chairman, Philip O'Doherty was reported to have acquired a new kit deal with Hummel.

[48] Derry's top goalscorer that season, Mark Farren, who finished with a tally of 20 goals, scored the winner against Monaghan before retiring from football for medical reasons as he sought to fight a benign tumour located in his brain.

Derry City wore Aston Villa Football Club's famous claret and blue jerseys with white shorts for its first season – 1929–30.

The style derived from Sheffield United, who wore the pattern and, specifically, Billy Gillespie,[7] a native of nearby County Donegal.

[56] Commercial sponsorship logos to appear on the shirt's front have included Northlands,[57] Warwick Wallpapers,[58] Fruit of the Loom,[53] Smithwick's[54] and AssetCo.

The winning entry was designed by John Devlin, a St. Columb's College student, and was introduced on 5 May 1986 as Derry hosted Nottingham Forest for a friendly, with Liam Nelis and Paul Gormley (on his fifth birthday) acting as mascots.

With the novelty of the Foyle Bridge wearing off over time, the crest lasted until 15 July 1997, when the current one was unveiled at Lansdowne Road with the meeting of Derry City and Celtic during a pre-season friendly tournament.

[63] The modern crest also features a centred football, the year of founding and the club's name in a contemporary sans-serif font – Industria Solid.

[7] Due to health and safety regulations the stadium has a seating capacity of 2,900 for UEFA competitions,[65] although it can accommodate 7,700 on a normal match-day, terraces included.

[66] The curved cantilever all-seated "New Stand" was constructed in 1991, while development on the still-insufficient facilities has been delayed numerous times and had yet to take place as of the end of the 2016 season.

It agreed and the club still operates under the constraints of The Honourable The Irish Society charter limitations which declare that the Brandywell must be available for the recreation of the community.

In effect, the club does not have private ownership and, thus, cannot develop by its own accord, with that discretion or whether to sell being left to the Derry City Council.

[83] During the home legs, ticketless fans desperate to see the games watched from a distance while standing on the high vantage point overlooking the Brandywell offered by the City Cemetery in Creggan and parked hired double-decker buses outside the stadium to help them see over the ground's perimeter.

When debts brought Derry close to extinction in the 2000–01 season, the local community responded en masse to help save the club.

The connection is argued to be rooted mainly in geography, as well as social, cultural and historical circumstances, as opposed to the club or its fans pushing towards the creation of a certain identity.

The city's wider Protestant community, almost entirely based in the Waterside, is largely apathetic, though some unionists and loyalists see the club as a symbol of Catholicism and nationalism as a result of the sectarian divide in support.

[15][88][89][90][91][92][93] Joining the Republic of Ireland's league augmented the perception and, on occasion, Protestant hooligans have thrown missiles at Derry's supporter buses as they journeyed to or returned from games across the border.

Derry's fans share a rivalry with the supporters of Finn Harps and sing the Undertones' Teenage Kicks as a terrace anthem.

[97] Current club ranking https://kassiesa.net/uefa/data/method5/trank2024.html Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply.

[113] As of 16 July 2007,[update] Paul Curran has made the second highest number of appearances for the club in the League of Ireland with 518, followed by Sean Hargan with 408 since 1995.

[116] Two days later, Sammy Curran had the honour of scoring Derry's first hat-trick, as the club came back from 5 to 1 down away to Portadown, only to lose 6–5 to a late goal.

The song's video included the group's front-man, Feargal Sharkey, kicking and leaping to head a ball while wearing the red and white jersey.

[122] The 2005 match was organised as a kind of security test in the run-up to the likely possibility that both teams, with socially polar fan-bases, qualified for and be drawn against one another in a Setanta Cup competition.