St Joseph's FC
Also written as St Josephs.
The club
St Joseph's Football Club, known as the Saints, were founded on 20 January 1912, which makes them the oldest football club still existing in Gibraltar; the next oldest, Manchester 62 FC, was not formed until fifty years later. St Joseph's are a separate club from the other two Gibraltarian sides most often seen in European football reporting: they are not Lincoln Red Imps FC, the record Gibraltarian champions, and they are not Europa FC. All three have shared the top end of Gibraltarian football in recent seasons, but St Joseph's identity, history and honours are entirely their own.
The club plays its home matches at the Victoria Stadium on Winston Churchill Avenue in Gibraltar, which holds 2,300. Home colours are a red and white striped shirt with navy shorts and socks, and the away kit is a navy blue V-neck shirt with white shorts and socks.
The club fell into financial difficulty in early 2022. In June of that year it was bought by Mike Garlick, the former Burnley chairman, with Mark Palmer, the owner of Weymouth, joining the board. As of the sources read here the manager is the Spaniard Javi Muñoz and the captain is Juanma González, also of Spain.
Recent seasons
St Joseph's spent the years after Gibraltar's UEFA membership in mixed form, coming close to relegation in 2013-14 before beating Mons Calpe in a relegation play-off to keep their place in the top division. From the mid-2010s they settled into the top half of the table and qualified for European competition for the first time in 2017. Under Gibraltar's newer Gibraltar Football League structure, adopted in 2019, St Joseph's have become one of the division's most consistent sides without yet winning the title again: they finished third in the Championship Group in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, then runners-up in three straight seasons, 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26. In 2025-26 they finished second with 63 points from 27 matches, 20 wins, 3 draws and 4 losses, behind champions Lincoln Red Imps on 72 points, with Europa FC third on 56. St Joseph's have not been among the dominant clubs of Gibraltarian football historically, with only the one league title to their name, but they have consistently been the closest challenger to Lincoln Red Imps in the last few seasons without closing the gap.
Honours and landmarks
St Joseph's have won the Gibraltar Football League once, in 1995-96, a season that also brought a league and cup double. They have won the Rock Cup nine times, in 1978-79, 1982-83, 1983-84, 1984-85, 1986-87, 1991-92, 1995-96, 2011-12 and 2013. They also won the Gibraltar Premier Cup in 1955-56 and the Pepe Reyes Cup in 2013 and 2024, and the club's women's section won the Women's League in 2007. Their standing as Gibraltar's oldest surviving club is itself a landmark; the club also established a feeder relationship with Real Balompédica Linense, the Spanish club just across the border, in 2013.
Notable scorelines
St Joseph's have generally struggled for goals against stronger European opposition. Their 2025-26 Conference League first qualifying round against Cliftonville of Northern Ireland stands out as a rare heavy-scoring win: a 2-2 draw at home followed by a 3-2 victory after extra time away, 5-4 on aggregate. Against that, their heaviest European defeats include a 0-10 aggregate loss to AEL Limassol of Cyprus in the 2017-18 Europa League first qualifying round (0-4 at home, 0-6 away), an identical 0-10 aggregate defeat to Rangers in the 2019-20 Europa League first qualifying round (0-4 at home, 0-6 away), and a 0-11 aggregate loss to Slavia Prague in the 2022-23 Conference League second qualifying round, beaten 0-4 at home and 0-7 away. St Joseph's all-time record win and record defeat in domestic competition were not established from the sources read here.
European record
St Joseph's first reached European qualifying in 2017-18, in the Europa League, and were beaten 0-10 on aggregate by AEL Limassol in the first qualifying round. In 2018-19 they lost on penalties to B36 Tórshavn of the Faroe Islands in the preliminary round after a 2-2 aggregate draw. In 2019-20 they won their first European tie, beating FC Prishtina of Kosovo 3-1 on aggregate in the preliminary round, before being eliminated 0-10 on aggregate by Rangers in the first qualifying round. In 2020-21 they again met B36 Tórshavn in the preliminary round, losing the first leg 1-2 before the second leg was abandoned.
The Europa Conference League, introduced in 2021-22, has been their regular competition since. They lost 2-4 on aggregate to FCI Levadia of Estonia in the first qualifying round that season. In 2022-23 they beat Larne of Northern Ireland 1-0 on aggregate in the first qualifying round, their first win over British or Irish opposition in Europe, before being heavily beaten 0-11 on aggregate by Slavia Prague of the Czech Republic in the second qualifying round. In 2024-25 they lost 2-3 on aggregate to Shelbourne of Ireland in the first qualifying round. In 2025-26 they beat Cliftonville of Northern Ireland 5-4 on aggregate in the first qualifying round before losing 0-4 on aggregate to Shamrock Rovers of Ireland in the second qualifying round.
Head-to-head notes
Specific head-to-head records against individual opponents beyond the scorelines listed above were not established from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
St Joseph's entered 2026-27 European qualifying in the Conference League first qualifying round against Bohemians of the Republic of Ireland. They lost 0-2 at home and drew 0-0 away, going out 0-2 on aggregate; exact dates and venues for the two legs were not established from the sources read here. Domestically, St Joseph's finished the 2025-26 Gibraltar Football League as runners-up to Lincoln Red Imps for a third consecutive season, and their form and results in the 2026-27 Gibraltar Football League itself were not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Joseph%27s_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_National_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_Football_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Gibraltar_Football_League
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.