From Zaragoza in Spain, which doesn't even have a La Liga team, to the capital of Germany, Berlin, HITC Sevens takes a look at seven massive cities that ought to have better football / soccer clubs.
It might be possible to find 7 villages with top flight teams in Europe- Hoffenheim in Germany and Dingwall in Scotland (home of Ross County) are two I can think of
I can't agree with that one. The problem with cities in Northrhine-Westphalia is that there are too many of them being really close together and all of them have football clubs. There are already 7 teams from NRW in the Bundesliga. The top 3 leagues in Germany would become pretty boring if even more teams from NRW would play in them. Cities like Bochum, Duisburg, Bielefeld, Krefeld and Münster at least have teams in the 2. Bundesliga or in the 3rd Division (Bielefeld being on the way back to the Bundesliga if the season should continue). Not to mention Cologne has Victoria Köln also playing 3rd Division with 1. FC Köln already playing Bundesliga. Of course RW Essen is a club with a long history and lots of success in the early days of German football but they failed to reach that level ever again. Essen might have 600 000 inhabitants but the club itself is nowhere near as relevant outside of the city borders as other clubs with a much larger catchment area like for example Kaiserslautern despite having a much smaller population. It's not always about the city proper but also about the area around it.
@@johnnyxrcfc They're from Gelsenkirchen which is, indeed, near Essen - but not officially part of it. However, both are part of the Ruhr urban area which consist of several cities basically grown together.
For 5 months in a year, Brazilian teams play the state championships, which hindered the devolopment of big teams in Brasília. A lot of small clubs were created, but none became even a local force, since the nearby teams from Goiânia historically fare much better in the national scenario. Gama played in Série A from 1999 to 2002, causing a turmoil when they contested successfully their relegation in 1999. Brasiliense played the Série A in 2006, but became famous for reaching the Copa do Brasil finals in 2002. Gama did put over 30 K spectators in Mané Garrincha back in 98 in the final match of Série B, showing there is unexploited potential in Brasília for football.
@@formerlymyself568 LLoris - Hernandez - Varane - Lenglet - Pavard - Kante - Pogba - Matuidi - Griezmann - Mbappe - Giroud, the main players all born in france.
Hertha Berlin is actually trying to become a "big city club" right now through their new investor, but all they've done is buying expensive players and sliding down the league table so far
Die versuchen schon seit Jahren erfolgreich zu sein, schaffen es aber nie. Ich bezweifle das sich da in Zukunft auch was ändern wird. Der Verein ist im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen in der Bundesliga einfach uninteressant. Mit dem ganzen Geld werden daher keine großen Namen egal in welchen Funktion eintreffen. Das Ziel muss sein sich in der Bundesliga zu stabilisieren. Und nicht die Top 7 anzugreifen.
@@swagcube5050 Soll ich mich jetzt provoziert fühlen von deinem Satz? Es bestätigt nur meine Theorie, denn wäre dies falsch, hättest du gegen argumentiert. Stattdessen fügst du eine ironische Aussage hinzu. Aber danke für deine Bestätigung!
As a Brazilian I can say that the Brasília best team , Brasiliense, had everything to challenge the big teams in Brazil to win titles,the problem is that during the years they suffered with poor administration and now they apear in the Série D , the 4th tier of Brazilian football,but they played the Série A about 18 years ago
@@imwinningthisone7613 so are Hertha Berlin and some of the teams mentioned in the video. Den Haag is the second capital city of the Netherlands with roughly half a million people yet its football team and fan base is like a small club. The team is usually in the bottom half of the table of the Eredivisie.
In the case of Spain, there's also the case of Murcia. One of the 10 biggest cities in the country but its team plays in the third division since God knows when
Hamburg! We are rubbish and have been rubbish for the last decade! Hamburg is the 2nd largest city in Germany and its two major clubs are in the 2. Bundesliga.
But Hamburg is still one of the most successful clubs in the Bundesliga ever and you won some european trophies. That´s better than any Berlin side ever.
Hamburg is Germany's Birmingham. Both 2nd largest cities in their countries. HSV & Aston Villa have both won a European Cup, both teams had a spell of being the dominant team in their countries, both teams have been rubbish in the last decade and both very recently playing in the 2nd tier. St Pauli & Birmingham City have perenially been 2nd tier clubs with the odd promotion swiftly followed by relegation and both have won very few trophies. Both second city derbies are very hostile.
@@slslskspslba2407 What makes it even more crazy is that HSV and Aston Villa's success and failures happen in the same time period. European Cup: Aston Villa 1982, HSV 1983. Relegation: Aston Villa 2016, HSV 2018
Yeah, it's an awful omission. We are talking about the second largest city of a football powerhouse like Argentina. It could easily be the number two after Berlin, and definitely above Zaragoza, San Francisco and Leeds.
@@Mhc-zp9kc yeah totally agree, and this more notorious if you compare it with smaller cities like Rosario or La Plata with really successful teams as Estudiantes, Newells or Rosario Central
Berlin at least has a kind of reason: for long decades it was virtually two cities: East Berlin and West Berlin. East Berlin - the capital of the communist German Democratic Repiblic - did have good top flight football teams, most prominently Dynamo Berlin - while West Berlin was a much less significant city than the unified Berlin was and is, basically an enclave within the GDR. The decades since the re-unification of Germany apparently wasn't enough to produce a strong top tier team - although Hertha did have a rather strong spell... (Also, while I understand your one city per nation policy, I think Hamburg would have deserved an honorable mention - it is larger than most of the cities on the list, and currently neither Hamuburger SV nor St. Pauli plays in Bundesliga 1. Same about Stuttgart.)
bioLarzen BFC Dynamo was a Stasi Club. Many games was manipulated cause BFC Dynamo was the favorite club from Erich Hoenecker. I hope this Club will relegate in the Kreisliga.
bioLarzen Hamburg is a very sucessfull club. They arent doing very well right now but historically they are much better then all the clubs on this list.
@@alfie8041 They currently have one of the most overrated managers in English football in Lee Johnson. They've been one of the bookies favourites for the last 4 seasons but haven't even made the playoffs & currently reside outside the top 6 this season. Teams like Sheff U & Huddersfield have been promoted in that time with a tiny budget in comparison.
it's so much more than that, Berlin has by far much more to offer than Football, clubs have it harder to attract fans here than in some of the other German cities with 100-500k people who look boring compared to Berlin. Also much more Top Sports, Basketball, Volleyball, Eishockey and much more to offer which most other Cities can't compare with, so you're not really stuck with 1 football club that you have to support.
@@LegendNinja41 Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris have plenty and in some cases more to offer than Berlin , yet they have far better teams than German capital.
Ukraine: Mykolaiv. There are some mid-level lower league teams from this city, but they never used to be really good, though one used to play in top flight around 25 years ago. 6:00 I never understood why Brasillia, a city with a good population size, is so underrated in every single way. Even not considering Rio and SP. 6:47 You caught my mind about underrated capitals! I never understood why Instambul is dominating in Turkish sports in all ways. Ankara has Gencherberligi and Ankaragucu in top flight, but they are mid-level (I hope I won't insult Turkish fans)... Biorn has Young Boys at least...
I think they also made the point that while San Jose has a club in area, the Earthquakes are terrible and SF and all of Bay Area should have a better team...but yeah it didn't do a great job on SF
Yeah I mean the "San Francisco" 49ers pretty much play in San Jose, its all the same area to us here. That said its a region with 7 million people thats also one of the richest in the world that also likes the sport so theres no excuse for the Earthquakes to be one of the cheapest teams in MLS.
The thing about Brasilia is that in the early days it didn't have quite an "identity" as a city, which is one of the main driving forces behind forming a football club. It was a planned city, occupied initially by politicians and their staffs, and the workers, especially from the Brasilian Northeast (called Candangos). And at that time, with the influence of Rio's media (on the radio, then on TV), Rio de Janeiro's teams, especially Flamengo and Vasco, are very popular there. The city began to find its roots in the 80s, when a generation had alerady been developed, bit it had reflected more on a rock bands movement than on football. But Gama, a team from Brasília, have played on our first division in the late 90s, and still have a relatively moderate fanbase, and the underdog Brasiliense, from a city in the region of Brasilia (Taguatinga) have played one top-tier season in 2005 and won the Brasilian Cup once.
Great video again :) Another fun option is Auckland. Auckland is a city of 1.6M people with a highly successful team in the top flight of NZ football, but the only professional team in NZ is in Wellington (the Phoenix) which has a population about 25% the size of Auckland's. The Wellington Phoenix play in the Australian A-League. The NZ Knights used to be an Auckland based A-League team but no longer exist, thus the creation of the Wellington Phoenix.
@@cherrycolareal the video is about cities that should have better football teams. So my point is Auckland should in theory have a better team than Wellington, or at least you would think so!
Spot on about Brasilia... That theyve failed to create a competitive team, but the explanation for that is excactly what you mentioned previously. Just about everybody in Brasilia support one of the big 12 clubs (all have stores and bars in the capital) , it pretty much comes down to the fact that people from all over the country poured into Brasilia from 1960 on, and most support whichever region their parents or now grand parents originated from, if their original region is not a football hotspot most will support more midiatic teams notably Flamengo, but also my beloved Vasco as well as Palmeiras, Corinthians and Sao Paulo. For places like Manaus (which should also be on your list, because diffrent than Brasilia its a huge city with much more history) to not even garner local support- no even mid sized clubs that dont have the success but have the local support (like Belem with Paysandu and Remo), as well most prefer to support Fla, Vasco, SP, Palmeiras, Coritnhians.... The other 7 big clubs have predominantly their supporters in their home states.. it is very rare for non Mineiros or Mineiro descendants to support Atletico or Cruzeiro, the same goes for Gauchos with Gremio and Internacional. With Botafogo, Fluminense and Santos they do have some support outside Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states, but considerably less than Flamengo, Vasco, Palmeiras, Corinthians and Sao Paulo. Also worthy to note down that some of the big 12 games are transferred to Brasilia. On the other hand Brasilia was able to create a competitive basketball team at national level that has spurred local support.
The fact that Berlin was splitted in two until the fall of the wall 1990. Before that hardly any football star would want to play in a city which was the border between west and east. After the fall there was a big gap to the other top teams and the city wasn't as financially fluid as other cities in the west. The closest that Berlin was to the top was in the early 2000s where they had Marcelino as their star man.
That would be a good video. It would be interesting to see why Hertha, with a good contender for best stadium in Germany and a huge city, have never come close to matching Dortmund or Munich sides after over 30 years of unification.
@@BiloLCFC Herthas Olympiastadion might have high capacity but it's form and distance between ranks and pitch makes it very unatmospheric. (It was buildt by the Nazis at you can see that by it being very outdated)
@rhys Johnson www.theguardian.com/football/copa90/2019/dec/24/football-berlin-capital-city-bundesliga-champions-rivalries this one does a pretty good job at that
Dublin in Ireland needs a big football team. They have Bohemians, Shamrock Rovers, Shelbourne, UCD and St Patrick's Athletic but despite having good history, none are good enough to compete in Europe. Dublin is the capital of Ireland and has a population of about 1 million people. Football/Soccer is the second biggest sport behind GAA in Ireland. A new team or a revamp of one of the others would be great to see. The same maybe for other places in Ireland such as Cork, Galway and Limerick. The SSE Airtricity League in Ireland is dominated really by Dundalk, Shamrock Rovers and about 3 years ago, Cork City. None of these team would be any good in Europe. Maybe one day someone rich will see the potential in Irish football/soccer and invest in one of the teams.
That's got nothing to do with the city itself. There are loads of leagues where the quality isn't quite there for European football (Finland, Slovakia, Estonia, Iceland... There are also countries that aren't automatically guaranteed a place in Europe as well despite being being better than Ireland such as Sweden, Belgium, Belarus, Scotland in a way (Where Edinburgh is lacking behind Glasgow, a suitable city for this video) and so many more countries). For Irish football standards, Bohemians and Rovers are quite big when it comes to attendances for example, and Rovers have won loads of titles, including the cup last year. I think the biggest problem isn't that there are no rich investors, it's just down to the fact that Irish people prefer Hurling and Gaelic to Soccer in general, and those who do care about football tend to be (English) Premier League supporters. There needs to be a bigger interest in the local football scene before anything changes.
@@KristerL fare enough but the 9nly way for Irish football/soccer to progress is investors. If the better players play in Ireland, more people will enjoy it and the team(s) would be able to compete in Europe
@@yourlocalprovo984 As long as there are no supporters that show interest investors won't take the plunge. Look at the supporter culture in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. That's where the people of Ireland need to get to before thinking of investors. And it is possible, because the cup finals are always having 30000+ in the crowd, and the derby between Rovers and Bohemians is always shown a lot of interest. There is so much potential, and Irish football supporters need to do what they can to progress. Investors isn't the only way to reach higher. In fact, that comes later, after the supporters and the club itself have done what they can.
For England I'm frankly surprised you've chosen Leeds. In their history they've won just about everything and just gone through a rocky patch these last few decades. Bristol would have been the city I would have chosen to put in this list. (PS I do like the city of Bristol even though I've only been there once).
Zaragoza is the 5th biggest city in Spain not the 10th. And although the club is currently in the second division (2nd place 1 point away from 1st) they are one of the most historical, successful and laureated clubs in Spanish history.
Gosh darn it, even in this seven, my long-suffering Bantams can't beat bloomin' Leeds! In all seriousness though, great video Alfie. Loving the content.
You're right. Part of the reason is that the SW of France is rugby-mad, so the town hasn't focused 100% on football (Toulouse has a top-notch rugby club)
Bristol are small clubs though. City can’t compete with Cardiff when trying to retain their players. Surely Bristol City fans must feel down-heartened when they are losing players to their rivals every season. The recruitment team are decent but those players are just leaving after one good season to go to bigger championship clubs.
Well, we are small country. But maybe you could mention Brno. It's second biggest city in Czechia and has about 400k inhabitants.However Brno doesn't have top-flight team. Just FYI. 😁
Dresden, my home city, has almost 550000 inhabitants and the biggest football club (Dynamo Dresden, a politically installed socialist police club from GDR times) has now been relegated down into the 3rd league, while the actual traditional club of the city, the Dresdner SC, two times league champions and two times cup winner, now are in the 7th league, which makes it propably the club with the biggest difference between success in the past and situation at the moment in the world.
Hey Alfie! Could u make a video about mental health in football? Just read the biography about Robert Enke and would like to know if and how players, fans, staff and media were learning in the last 10 years after he passed away. Keep up the awesome content and stay healthy, greeeetz from Hannover
Even though I'm living in Berlin, I had to look up the supposed titel Hertha won in 2002. It was the German League Cup. Now, I know that the League Cup is somewhat important in England. The German League Cup isn't, though. Or rather: It wasn't. Because it's been discontinued since 2007, after only being installed in 1997. No one takes it seriously, and it was completely insignificant while it lastet. Apart from their three titles in the 2nd Bundesliga (1990, 2011, 2013), their only real titles were the German championships in 1930 and 1931. That said, Berlin isn't really a football city at all. 1. FC Union may change that, but they like their role as an underdog. For them, every season in the 1st Bundesliga is a huge success. Hertha, on the other hand... well, nobody really cares about Hertha. They've been overpromising and underachieving as long as I can remember. And that's pretty much all you can say about them. Compare Berlin to other German cities like Dortmund, Kaiserslautern, Bremen, Karlsruhe, Braunschweig... It just doesn't feel the same. Even though some of these clubs haven't achieved anything noteworthy in decades, they're seriously important to their city, and the whole region. You will find no shortage of pubs broadcasting all kinds of football matches in those cities. In Berlin, however, I was struggling to find a pub that would show the match between Germany and France in the recent Euros. When I found one, there were almost as many French fans as Germans. You rarely see fans in their club's gear in the city, you'll never hear people talking about yesterday's match while commuting. Maybe it's a bit different in Köpenick (the southeastern district on the outskirts of the city where Union is located), but in general, Berlin just doesn't have a football culture.
Palermo played EL qualifying for the group stage some years ago (going by memory, not sure). In the last decade supporters could admire the various players such as Dybala, Ilicic, Cavani, Miccoli, Belotti, Sirigu, Gilk, Emerson Palmieri, Amauri, Abel Hernandez and many others at Renzo Barbera stadium - I wouldn’t agree in stating they did that bad imo
To be honest, as a Palermo supporter, we have been quite shit so far. Never won anything despite being among the biggest cities in Italy, whereas other teams from smaller cities have achieves a lot more (Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Verona, Genoa etc.)
Surely Sheffield should be ahead of Leeds? The city where the modern game was founded and yet until recently has been largely absent from the top tier with two underperforming clubs
As an Union fan I was far from surprised to see Berlin as #1 on the list. History, politics, division/reunification and the Stasi screwed the city over for football and so much more. But it was nice to beat Dortmund, Mönchengladbach, and some other good teams in our first Bundesliga season. Also gave Bayern a fright which is always good.
Vienna is pretty sad actually. Especially because they have a pretty successful history. There are at least 4 clubs which played a huge role in Austrian, and even in international football in the past (at least for a 4 years) each of them quite special and with a great fan-culture (Rapid, Austria, First Vienna FC, Sportklub). But the worst is, that one of these clubs is really big, and has a very large but especially incredibly good fanbase (one of the best in Europe), and now they aren't even at the very top in Austria since more than a decade. It's so sad because now we have a team like Salzburg winning everything, which no one is interested in. Makes a small league even less interesting..
Your opinion isn't carried by opinion polls, though. Rapid may still have the most fans, but it's also among the most hated clubs (mostly due to the fact that they still get preferential treatment from refs as overwhelming evidence shows) while Salzburg has a pretty good image across Austria (which surprised even me when I did that research). Also, calling Rapid's hooligans "great fan-culture" is some strange Newspeak. And yeah, despite being located in a massive population centre, almost no-one cares about Austria, Vienna or WSK.
In Spain, I'd add Málaga and Alicante, Málaga did make it to the Champions League in 2012 but are now mid table in the second division and in the case of Alicante, their main team, Hércules fc, have been in the top level many times (although since the 90s they have been mostly in lower divisions) but I don't know if they qualified for a European competition and are currently in 2a B, the third tier of Spanish football, having had their last time in the top level in the 2010/11 season. Both those cities are big, are important seaports, are major entry points to the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
In women’s football, one of the best teams in Europe is a little local club from a small Danish town called Hjørring. I find it quite fun how that little town is home to the most winning danish team and one of the best in Europe
Since you mentioned other sports, like with Chicago or Izmir when not picking them, you could have mentioned other Sports which are very popular in Berlin and play a role why Union or Hertha are not that huge, especially when you talk about Gladbach or Kaiserslautern which are Football cities who can't offer much more from other sports. Berlin has the joint most successful Eishockey team in Germany. Berlin is home to the Internationally most successful German Basketball team, which also has the most Members. Berlin has the best Volleyball team in Germany. Berlin has a top Handball team. Berlin has the best water polo team in Germany. There's probably much more noteworthy clubs but i honestly just watch Football and simply searched a bit on the Internet for this information. As of 2016, there were 2400 Sport clubs in Berlin, with 640.000 Members, as of 2015 there were 73 Berlin clubs in their respective Top Divisions and 70 Berlin clubs in their respective 2. Divisions, that should give you the full picture. Berlin is not a Football city, yes we love Football here but it's not dominating everything like in some other cities like Dortmund.
If you ever do a part 2 you can consider Thessaloniki in Greece. The second biggest city in the country with just 6 super league wins between the 2 most popular teams of the city
For the German inclusion I would have picked Rostock. The city has "only" around 200000 people living in it, but it is still the biggest city in the noth eastern area of Germany. The closest triü to an actual Bundesliga game would be to Berlin which would be more than 200 km so there would be a large area available to cover for fanbase of the team. Still the biggest club of the city Hansa Rostock is playing in 3rd league since 2012 and was not plaing in first league since 2005. The team won 4 DDR championships and that was it for titles in their history so historically there is also not much going on.
Hertha Berlin wants to be a BIG CITY CLUB. They got 125 million Euro from a person last summer and are even worse than last season. In Germany we make jokes about Hertha. And currently, Union Berlin is bigger and better.
Trabzonspor...won turkish title 6 times and were ieaders in current season before it was suspended. I think its population is around 700k but compared to larger cities like Ankara and İzmir their success mean something
Wouldn’t include San Francisco the Earthquakes are in San Jose Which is apart of the metropolitan area and a lot of people in the city love the earthquakes and they’ve had some good years before the last few being rough houston is a better choice imo they have local celebrities supporting the team a large Latino population who love the sport and still struggle to draw fans and have been irrelevant for a while
Palermo actually did not have finished 11th in last Serie B season. They had finished 3rd, with 63 points, but have had 20 points from financial irregularities deducted, initially, dropping to 11th, and them being further punished with the relegation. But they had a strong team qualified for playoffs.
You should’ve chosen Phoenix instead of San Francisco. Phoenix has a population of 4 million and our team, Phoenix rising, is in the second tier. We also are partly owned by didier drogba
I live in Brasília and came to mention it. As the city is quite new, most of the population here are people who came from the other states and their sons, so many people here support teams from their “native” states.
@@karlsebastianadvincula6968 which is what this video is all about. The topic is "big cities that should have better teams". And Berlin definitely needs a better team. Hertha is just not good enough. After all, their competition are clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, PSG, Atletico and Real ... of course Hertha isn't trash, but it's not on the same level as the others.
As Mr T said, Berlin should be better, there are a lot of mitigating circumstances for football in Berlin, but Hertha should be power house in German football.
Assuming one of the São Paulo teams mentioned is Santos FC, it is not from São Paulo city, but from Santos, which is a coastline city about 70 kilometers away from São Paulo. They have many supporters based in São Paulo metro, though.
I would imagine though that Delhi citizens are more interested and passionate about cricket than football, which is probably why theres no football team.
If you look for more like those on national level The Hague is also a good one. 3rd city in Holland. Haven't had a top flight team for most of the 90's. Never finished 6th or higher since 1976. Brno 2nd city in Czech hadn't had a top flight team the previous two seasons.
