Best footballing city?

[LukaMotion]

Had an interesting debate today with a mate, which city would you call the best footballing city in the world?

The main candidates:

London (Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal, Etc...)

Manchester (Utd and City)

Milan (AC Milan and Inter)

Barcelona (Barca and Espanyol)

Madrid (Real and Athletico)

Other contenders:

Glasgow (Celtic and Rangers)

Rio de Janeiro (Fluminese, Botafogo, Vasco de Gama and Flamengo)

Rome (Roma and Lazio)

Moscow (CSKA, Spartak, Dynamo and Locomotiv)

Lisbon (Sporting and Benfica)

Buenos Aries (River Plate and Boca Juniors)

Athens (Panathanaikos, Olympiakos, A.E.K)

Or would you give it to somewhere else?

 

[Shanks]

Manchester or Milan for me.

 

[KitKat]

London. So many different fans of different london clubs, makes for great banter.

 

[Dan Yeats]

Can any city with a decent level of domestic football boast a greater number of clubs in their top flight than London?

 

[Col_M]

Istanbul would be pretty tasty

 

[hughy]

London, without question. How many other cities can claim they have 6 or 7 clubs playing in one of the best leagues in the world? Individually London clubs might not be the most historic. However Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and West Ham are all household names in world football. It's a credit to our capital that we boast 3 of the top 5 teams in our league.

 

[LukaMotion]

Interesting comments, I was adamantly championing London as well during the debate but there are other cities that put forward a good case.

Manchester can't be ignored, Utd, probably the greatest club in football history, and currently it is home to the top two sides in the country, with no sign of that partnership breaking up anytime soon.

Milan, possibly the greatest rivalry in world football in AC/Inter and also historically, the amount those two teams have won over the years.

Madrid, Real are in my eyes the only other club that can match Man Utd historically for achievement, and both of those teams are probably in the top 10 in the world right now with Falcao and Ronaldo, probably the two best players in the world, behind Messi, right now.

And Barcelona, home to probably the best team in the world right now, and I don't mean Espanyol.

Other interesting facts I dug up, apparently Buenos Aries has 24 football clubs. Thats surely a record for one city, I doubt even London has that.

It also depends what you define greatness as. Should the honour go to Sheffield? Home to Sheffield FC, birthplace of football and land of the Steel City derby?

Or maybe it should go to Mexico City? In terms of history, has any city witnessed a better football tournament that Mexico City with the 1970 World Cup. Pele and Brazil at their best, competitive football at its finest. In modern terms, Mexico City has 3 of the 4 best teams in the Mexican league, UNAM, Cruz Azul and Club America.

 

[Spurger King]

London all day long.

 

[Casparian]

Other interesting facts I dug up, apparently Buenos Aries has 24 football clubs. Thats surely a record for one city, I doubt even London has that.

Grabbed my curiousity and this is what I found obviously some clubs are in different divisions now...

Premiership:
Arsenal
Chelsea
Fulham
Tottenham Hotspur
West Ham United

Football League Championship:
Charlton Athletic
Crystal Palace
Queens Park Rangers

League One:
Leyton Orient
Millwall

League Two
Barnet
Brentford
Dagenham & Redbridge

Conference South:
Bromley
Fisher Athletic
Hampton & Richmond Borough
Hayes & Yeading United
Sutton United
Welling United

Isthmian League Premier Division:
Carshalton Athletic
Harrow Borough
Hendon Claremont
A.F.C. Hornchurch
Leyton
Wealdstone
A.F.C. Wimbledon

Isthmian League Division One North:
Dartford
Enfield Town
Ilford
Northwood
Redbridge
Waltham Forest
Wingate and Finchley

Isthmian League Division One South:
Corinthian-Casuals
Cray Wanderers
Croydon Athletic
Dulwich Hamlet
Kingstonian
Molesey
Tooting & Mitcham United
Metropolitan Police F.C.


Other notable clubs:
Clapham Rovers - Scored the first F.A Cup goal.
London XI - Created to take part in Inter Cities Fair Cup reaching the final.
Thames - Members of the football league between 1930-1932.
Upton Park - Represented Britain in the 1900 Summer Olymipics football tournament and won gold medal.
Wanderers - Winners of the first ever F.A Cup.
Wimbledon - Left London in 2003 and are now called Milton Keyenes Dons.

I think that is all of them if I remember. So there is 41, 42 including MK Dons but they don't live in London any more.

 

[RichSpur58]

London, then Buenos Airies.

Cant be bothered to post but half the Argentine premier league including River, Boca, Velez, Racing, Indipendiente, San Lorenzo, Estudientes, Banfied, Arsenal, Lanus, Tigre and a few more.

 

[Vedi]

Depends on how what your criterias are. I think simply on term of quality its London by far. Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea obviosly, but Fulham for example can beat any team on a good day.

But for football culture as a whole I think its Buenos Aires all day long for me. I mean you have 7 teams from Buenos Aires itself in the first division, 10 in the metropolitan area. An astonishing Total of 20 Teams in the first and second division together. No other city comes close to that. That city lives for football. I dont think I will ever see this in London:

 

[HappySpur]

London has two things that separate it from other cities in this sense. One is the pure volume as has been comprehensively shown by Casparian. 13 clubs in the top four divisions is unmatched. But on top of that, for one of the bigger cities in the world, it is still football mad. A town like Paris, which is close in size only pays attention to football at important times. It's very hard to even find a place to watch matches in Amsterdam. And even Rome feels like it has isolation from football at times. And so if you combine clubs and passion, it's a no brainer.


There are a few cities that deserve a very affectionate honorable mention, such as Buenos Aires and Rio.

You missed São Paulo: São Paulo, Palmeiras, Corinthians and Santos.
Istanbul (Besiktas, Gala, Fenerbahce)
Mexico City (Atlante, Cruz Azul, America, National)

and Madrid has Rayo Vallecano and Getafe as well as those listed above. And I don't know enough about the league, but I think Tehran would need to be rated between clubs and passion.

I think there will be cities in China that will one day be added to the list, but that's a ways off.

And don't discount NYC. While the American league is decades from being as important as they think they are, New York has a specialness to it. You can find a bar and supporters group for any club of significance in the world in NYC. And you can always find somebody to talk about the sport with. So it's not on the level of those listed, but clandestinely it's a good place to be a fan.

 

[Syn_13]

London, without a doubt. Not only for the big boys but all the other smaller clubs too. Can't think of any city in the world with as large a range of clubs as London, varying in different abilities and over different leagues.

 

[miles_64]

I don't have a particularly strong view either way as it can be defined in so many ways but I guess it is important to mention that Manchester does have the two top clubs in the premier league right now...

 

[talkshowhost86]

I can't help but feel Ripon has been unfairly overlooked in this thread.

 

[ItsBoris]

I don't have a particularly strong view either way as it can be defined in so many ways but I guess it is important to mention that Manchester does have the two top clubs in the premier league right now...

Yeah but that's it. London though has 6 premier league teams and 3 of them are in the best 5 basically.

 

[leonspurs]

London, then Buenos Airies. Though hate to say it if it comes to titles Liverpool proberly is top in England.

 

[tototoner]

For a city that just lives and breathes football there are only 2 options for me.

Glasgow and Liverpool

I think 8 Premier League managers at the start of season 2011-2012 were born in Glasgow, that shows how much football is a part of peoples lives there growing up.

London has a lot of Premier League clubs and football clubs in general but football isn't what the city is famous for or known around the world for so I cannot have it as the world's best footballing city.

Outside Europe would have to be Buenos Airies

 

[SugarRay]

London boasts 19 titles between all the clubs ( well, the big 3 ) in the city. United alone have won it 19 times.

I have always thought London has punched well below its weight in football terms considering.

I'm sure a few people used to argue that it's harder for a London club to win the title given just how many local derbies they have to go through, although these days with very few local players and even fans it seems, it's not quite as fierce as it once was.

 

[HappySpur]

London boasts 19 titles between all the clubs ( well, the big 3 ) in the city. United alone have won it 19 times.

I have always thought London has punched well below its weight in football terms considering.

I'm sure a few people used to argue that it's harder for a London club to win the title given just how many local derbies they have to go through, although these days with very few local players and even fans it seems, it's not quite as fierce as it once was.

Here you are talking about a different phenomenon. For the longest time, it was industrial and port cities that were the centers of football. That's because they were the centers of immigration and where there were immigrants, there were people that sought to find commonality with the community. Football was the easiest way to do this. So in England, the early power was from the industrial midlands and then followed by the port cities. In London, even if you were an immigrant, you didn't need football as a way to fit in. And this continues through all the western nations. Marseilles over Paris. Bayer and the Rhine Valley over Berlin. Turin and Milan over Rome. Malmo and Gottenburg over Stockholm. Glasgow over Edinburgh. Bern and Oslo are minor players in their countries.

That's why no capital of a democratic country had won the Champions league until Madrid won their first post-Franco title in 30 years in 1998. Any other capital cities that won, were communist or fascist. Except for Amsterdam, although den Haag is the seat of the capital and it becomes a bit convoluted as to how you define Amsterdam (industrial city vs cultural capital). Mostly it has been industrial cities with Nottingham and Birmingham having titles and London having to wait until 2012.....sadly for us.

So the western democracies are typically dominated by port/industrial cities when it comes to football. But that is changing as capital cities are now so big that football is once again becoming an easy avenue to integration for immigrants. After Fergie is gone, the chances of a non-London club winning the Champions League will become very remote......doesn't matter how much money City has. Players want to move to hubs, not towns that are downsizing.