Imagine for a moment that you are transported to a place where smoke fills the air, drums rumble all around you, people shout and sing out-of-tune chants in a religious fervor. It’s chaos and mayhem in one moment. You’re packed in a tight side street with hundreds of people marching in one direction. Through the smoke and raised scarves of colorful varieties you can make out an old structure. It towers above the residences and shops flanking you. You catch just a brief glimpse of this superstructure through the crack between the roofs, its concrete façade looms in intimidating fashion. Its worn paint shows its age and history. You are compelled to move with the crowd toward this structure and you wonder what this is all about. In short, it’s derby day.

An Introduction to Derbies

The derby (pronounced “darby”) is one of the fiercest matches you can watch in soccer. These fierce rivalries are more than fixtures. They are a source of neighborhood pride. These are fierce rivalries that take place between two teams of one city. In this case there is the Manchester Derby between City and United. In terms of geographic locality, there is the North West Derby between Liverpool FC and Manchester United. This is where the waters can get muddied a little. The true definition of a derby is a rivalry between two teams of the same city. But soccer is arguably the most politically motivated sport in the world. This is where hotly contested matches between two top teams can become just a fierce as an inter-city derby. Often confused for derbies, some matches with teams nearly a country apart will have that same intense feeling of a derby. For example, you have El Clásico between the conservative, nationalist Real Madrid, and the left-leaning secessionists of Barcelona who inhabit a region that wishes to break off from Spain and be their own independent country of Catalonia. That’s an oversimplification of a tumultuous political battle, but these teams represent more than the game. It’s literally in Barcelona’s slogan. “Més que un club,” or more than a club, is the motto that shows that Barcelona FC represents Catalan culture. It’s a statement that rings true to the supporters as it’s a fan-owned and operated clubs competing at the highest level.

I may be getting a little off course here. But this is how big soccer can get and it’s very easy to get wrapped up into the history of these rivalries. The closest thing I can compare derbies to is that of the biggest rivalries in American college sports. But even then, few if any of these games are cross-town rivalries. The one that comes closest off the top of my head is the Cy-Hawk Trophy between the University of Iowa and Iowa State. However, Ames and Des Moines are completely different towns. With that said, only 30 miles separate these two teams and the fan atmosphere can get electric. And after doing a quick Google search, I can also point to the Battle of L.A., which pits USC against UCLA. When I think about major league sports, the definition can fit better in some cases. For example, in MLB, Chicago has the Cross-Town Classic between the White Sox and the Cubs. In the NBA, Los Angeles has the Clippers and Lakers rivalry and they even share the same arena. For the NHL, there’s the Battle of New York, which pits the Rangers against the Islanders. But this is the United States of America, and I don’t know if you’ve seen a map, but even on the Mercator Projection map, the United States is absolutely gigantic. This makes having cross-town rivalries in major sports hard. However, when you take tiny guys like England or Italy where you can have up to four or five top-flight teams within the same city, then the term derby makes more sense. London alone has five teams competing in the Premier League and twelve playing top-flight soccer.

The Top Derbies in the World

Manchester Derby

The Manchester Derby has been contested since 1881, and when both teams were just upstarts, it was more of a friendly rivalry than an all-out battle. As both sides were trying to gain stature, Manchester residents would watch both teams from week-to-week. After World War II, this sort of dual support became less common. Between that time and the 1990s, both teams were competitive between each other, but their fortunes in the top league were inconsistent. In the 1990s, Manchester United became a powerhouse club and dominated City for the entire decade. When City was taken over with Saudi-backing in 2008, the Manchester Derby saw a dramatic shift where City has become a more formidable force.

Old Firm

The Old Firm is the Glasgow derby between Scottish Premier League clubs Rangers FC and Celtic FC. These two clubs boast 104 league championships between each other, 72 Scottish Cups, and 45 Scottish League Cups, making them the two most successful and popular clubs in the country. The derby has carried a lot of political weight over the years as it has pertained to the religious sectarianism of Scotland (Rangers being primarily of Protestant backers and Celtic’s of the Catholic faith).

Merseyside Derby

The Merseyside Derby features two of England’s most well-known teams, Liverpool FC and Everton FC. It is England’s longest-running top-flight derby and has featured 233 meetings. A friendlier derby than most among fans, at one time it did not enforce fan segregation as the stands at both stadiums would have red and blue supporters mixing among each other. Hooliganism strained relations for some time, but the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 brought fans from both clubs together in a show of solidarity.

Derby della Madonnina

Okay, now we’re back to the bad blood. The Derby della Madonnina or the Milan Derby is the clash between Italian clubs Inter Milan and AC Milan. This one is all about classism and the divide between the high-class supporters of Inter Milan and the populist working class of AC Milan. The fact that both teams share the same stadium, the San Siro, Inter fans would be able to ride their own motorcycles to the stadium while AC Milan fans had to ride public transportation.

The North London Derby

If the creation of a derby could be made into a Netflix special, this would be the most compelling choice. The North London derby is the meeting between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal FC. To set the stage, Arsenal used to be a south London team until 1913 when they moved their ground up north. This was Tottenham’s turf, but things started friendly enough. In fact their first meeting was a World War I relief fundraiser. It was sunshine and rainbows until 1919 when England’s first division league expanded by two teams. At the time, Chelsea was an awful team and they would have faced relegation, but the expansion allowed them to take one of those two expansion slots. This left the last opening up for grabs, which the other league teams put to a vote. Tottenham was in the running, but other teams sought promotion. These included Barnsley, Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Birmingham, Hull City, and Arsenal. Arsenal garnered eighteen votes to Tottenham’s eight. Arsenal gained promotion while Tottenham fell to the second division, thus sparking one of the most bitter rivalries in soccer. Since that time, Tottenham supporters have accused Arsenal of using backdoor dealings thanks to the efforts of then chairman Sir Henry Norris. Again, this would be wonderful for a Netflix binge.

El Derbi Madrileño

To round things out, the fiercest derby in Spain goes to the Madrid teams Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. El Derbi Madrileño started in 1906 and has everything to do with the business dealings of the early stage of Real Madrid’s rise. At the turn of the century, Madrid Foot-Ball Club was swallowing up smaller clubs left-and-right signing their best players. As luck would have it, Athletic Club Madrid were able to keep most of their best players thanks to financial help from their parent club, Athletic Club Bilbao. This rivalry is a whole bag of socio-economic factors, but Real Madrid has dominated the derby for decades holding 110 wins to Atleti’s 56. However, Atletico has turned around their fortunes since the turn of the century by performing well in league and European competitions like the Champions League and Europa League.

Now that you know a little more about derbies and the historical significance they carry, I hope this will help you get more invested into soccer. This article doesn’t even scratch the surface of what makes derbies so important, but now you have a little more context to help you get more invested into watching the sport. Often as a neutral fan, it’s fun to just watch these games because they will often show players playing at the peak of their abilities. These games are rough-and-tumble and the fans really get into the action. There’s nothing that quite reaches the level of emotional investment that these fans put into their clubs, and if you find yourself at a derby match in the future, make sure you take it all in and enjoy the experience. Thank you so much for reading. As always, be well and watch more soccer.