The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing team. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45-minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is the world's most popular sport.

The Arsenal Football Club, commonly known as simply Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Islington, North London, England. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. In domestic football, Arsenal have won 13 league titles, a record 14 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, and a Football League Centenary Trophy. In European football, they have one European Cup Winners' Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.

The history of Arsenal Football Club between 1886 and 1966 covers the time from the club's foundation, through the first two major periods of success and the club's subsequent decline in the early 1960s.

The Isle of Dogs is a large peninsula bounded on three sides by a large meander in the River Thames in East London, England. It includes the Cubitt Town, Millwall and Canary Wharf districts. The area was historically part of the Manor, Hamlet, Parish and, for a time, the wider borough of Poplar. The name had no official status until the 1987 creation of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council. It has been known locally as simply "the Island" since the 19th century.