April 18, 2026, 4:47 a.m. ET
They’re not going down, right? They’re too big to go down.
With only six matches left in the Premier League season, Tottenham Hotspur sit 18th in the table, two points away from 17th-place West Ham, who hold the last survival spot to avoid dropping down to the EFL Championship.
Saturday, April 18 sees Spurs hosting manager Roberto De Zerbi’s old club Brighton and Hove Albion, who have won four out of their last five games in the Premier League. Spurs, on the other hand, have not won a Premier League game in 2026, with the team from North London only getting five points in the last fourteen games.
Members of England’s ‘Big Six,’ last year’s Europa League winners, dropped out of the top division with a 22nd-place finish in 1977. Before that, Tottenham hadn’t been relegated since 1935.
“The fact we are mentioning Spurs going down is unbelievable. It’s absolutely ridiculous, really,” former Spurs player Danny Murphy told BBC Sport back in February. “Whether you blame recruitment or the owners, it would be catastrophic for that club.”
Absolutely ridiculous or not, Spurs’ possible relegation is only the most recent example of a massive team’s unthinkable relegation both in Europe and outside of it. With Spurs teetering on the edge, these are some other teams that were “too big” to go down.
River Plate: 2011
One of, if not the biggest, relegations in the history of South American soccer, River Plate’s relegation shook an entire country.
River’s relegation was sealed in a promotion/relegation play-off that had to be abandoned as the crowd rioted with the home side 3-1 down. In the hours after River Plate’s relegation, more than 70 people were injured in incidents both inside River’s Monumental stadium and outside of it, according to reports from the Guardian.
“There’s a state of mourning,” Marcelo Roffe, president of the Argentine Association of Sports Psychology, told Argentinian paper La Nacion in 2011. “Some face the situation, but many choose to shut themselves away, miss work, or not interact with their office colleagues.”
River bounced back immediately, winning the second division, spending only one year in the second tier of Argentinian soccer.
Atletico Madrid: 2000
Spain’s third-biggest team, behind Real Madrid and Barcelona, Atletico Madrid’s relegation at the turn of the century was a quick fall from grace.
Embattled by financial woes and a criminal investigation against its chairman, Jesus Gil, for corruption, Atletico fell out of La Liga after 65 years, finishing 19th out of 20 teams. The team’s fall came only four years after “los Colchoneros” won both La Liga and the Copa del Rey, securing a domestic double.
“It was a season so full of paradoxes,” DAZN commentator Fran Guillen told The Athletic. “It was a perfect storm caused by what happened with Gil, and it ended up pushing the project to the abyss.
Atletico’s return was not as quick as other members of this list, as the team from Madrid spent two seasons in the second division before returning to La Liga.
Manchester United: 1974
Years before Tottenham’s last relegation, United’s drop in 1974 is one of the most dramatic in the history of English football.
Only six years before, in 1968, United reached the pinnacle of European football, winning the old European Cup at Wembley against Eusebio’s Benfica. But the drama of dropping down to the second division was not enough.
The “Red Devils” relegation was sealed by United legend Denis Law, who scored the goal that secured their relegation while playing for city rivals Manchester City, according to UK publication The Times.
Manchester United returned in a flash, winning the second division on their first try.
Hamburger SV: 2018
Hamburg’s relegation was so unthinkable for its fans that the team proudly displayed a stadium clock that counted their uninterrupted time in the Bundesliga.
But eventually, the clock froze as the “Die Rothosen” were relegated to the German second division back in 2018. Up until the moment of their drop, Hamburg were the only team in German soccer that had never been relegated from the Bundesliga since its creation in 1963.
European champions in 1983 and one of Germany’s most historic clubs, the team’s relegation had been a real possibility for years as they survived the drop by the skin of its teeth both in 2015 and 2016
Hamburg’s time in the second division was not short-lived; instead, the team spent seven years struggling to get out, with heartbreaking incidents along the way.
Back in 2023, Hamburg thought they had earned automatic promotion when they beat Sandhausen 1-0 on the final day, before victory was snatched from their hands by Heidenheim, who scored a 99th-minute winner to send Hamburg to a promotion-relegation playoff.
Hamburg would go on and lose the playoff to Stuttgart, extending their time in the second tier until their promotion last May.
Schalke: 2021
Another German entry on this list, Schalke, had qualified for the Champions League eight times since 2000 and even reached the semifinals in 2011. The team where Manuel Neuer, Mesut Ozil, Leroy Sane and more debuted professionally, Schalke’s drop to the second tier was a surprise to its fans, even to this day.
“When I speak to other fans about the relegation sometimes, we’re still not quite sure how it happened,” Niklas Heising, journalist for German newspaper Bild, told The Athletic.
Schalke’s relegation was confirmed by a 1-0 defeat to Arminia Bielefeld in 2021 in a mostly empty stadium due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After that result, they returned to their Veltins-Arena stadium to meet a group of 500 fans. The players were pelted by eggs and chased around the stadium by angry fans before police arrived to intervene, according to German website Sport 1.
“Die Königsblauen’s” time in the second division was short, winning it on their first try. But their time back in the Bundesliga lasted only a year, with Schalke dropping down again. Today, the team is leading the second division with hopes of being promoted once again.
Tottenham’s relegation odds
Odds via DraftKings, as of 11 a.m. April 17
- Tottenham -110
- West Ham + 175
- Nottingham Forest +500
- Leeds +1400
USA TODAY’s Jesse Yomtov contributed to this report.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@usatodayco.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
