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The Biggest Derbies in Football
Published: 2021-12-03 By: The Guru
This weekend, two of the most famous German Bundesliga clubs, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Münich will face each other in a derby called “Der Klassiker”, a rivalry that has been going on for more than 50 years. The match is surrounded by high anticipation - fans of both teams are rooting for their own favourite, and bookmakers are building their football betting promotions around it - as they do with every match that’s part of such a long-running rivalry between adversaries.
In Der Klassiker, Bayern is ahead at this time, with 64 victories, and the biggest goal difference between the two in a single match was 10 - Bayern beat Dortmund 11-1 in a Bundesliga match played almost exactly 50 years ago.
Der Klassiker is clearly one of the biggest and most-followed rivalries in football - but it’s clearly not the longest-running, and neither is it the biggest and most-followed one. There are other rivalries that have been going on for much longer.
These rivals could also be perfect for the best football betting strategies from Overlyzer
Derby of the Eternal Enemies (Greece)
The Derby of the Eternal Enemies is an ongoing football rivalry between two of Greece’s most successful football teams, Olympiacos, and Panathinaikos. This rivalry is not only about football - or at least it wasn’t at its origin - but also about social, cultural, and regional differences: Panathinaikos was a team from central Athens, representing the high-class part of Greek society, while Olympiacos comes from Piraeus, a port city on the outskirts of Athens, representing the working class. The rivalry has been ongoing since the 1932–33 season of the Greek Cup.
To make things more interesting, so to say, the two teams both have large fan bases, and their fans are also considering themselves rivals - this often results in broken seats, fireworks, even fights and street rioting during the matches of the Mother of all battles.
Eternal Derby (Croatia)
Croatia has recently emerged as one of the up-and-coming European football nations. And it has a football rivalry that’s been ongoing for almost a century: the Eternal Derby played by Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split.
Građanski, the predecessor of Dinamo Zagreb, started this rivalry with Hajduk in the 1920s - the team was disbanded after World War II, and replaced by Dinamo. But the rivalry remained between Zagreb and Split, and between the Bad Blue Boys (Dinamo) and the Torcida (Hajduk), the fan clubs of the teams.
Out of the 228 official matches played by the two teams, Dinamo has the most wins (100).
Manchester Derby (England)
English football is full of ongoing rivalries, with many teams having more than one ongoing clash - one example would be Manchester United that is on a war footing with Liverpool, Arsenal, and Leeds at the same time. Today, let’s just look at one of its most relevant ongoing rivalries, though, the one with the team that it shares a city - and, in part, a name - with: Manchester City.
The Manchester Derby is played since the two teams played for the first time in 1881 - that’s a nice round number of 140 years. The two teams have played 185 matches in all competitions so far, with the next match scheduled in March 2022. Out of this total, the Red Devils won 77, currently leading the Citizens by 21 victories - but in the last clash, played this November, the Citizens were victorious, beating United 2-0.
