An overview of the top 20 biggest football derbies in Europe (based on combined average attendances)

Introduction

I’ve written previously about the huge Manchester derby match that took place on Monday 30th April 2012, where Vincent Kompany’s goal just before half-time was all that separated the two sides (allowing City to leapfrog United at the top of the Premier League with only two games to go). Should City go on to win the league for the first time since 1968 (as they’re more than capable of doing), this result will be seen as the one which best represents the shifting of the balance of power between the two sides – something which can only be good for Manchester’s global brand (in so far as it can now market itself as the capital of English football, boasting not one but two of the world’s best clubs and, from 6th July, the National Football Museum). Kompany was right when he said that the Manchester derby is now the most important match in the world after La Liga’s El Clasico, watched by a global TV audience of around 650m and attended in person by Diego Maradona himself.

Of course, in terms of European footballing success, all one-city derbies pale in comparison to Milan, a city whose two teams have amassed a grand total of ten European Cups/Champions League titles between them (Madrid alone are not far behind with nine; Manchester/Liverpool have eight). In fact Milan is the only city in Europe with more than one winner of the competition, making any objective success-based comparisons of European footballing derbies difficult. An easier and in many ways more appropriate method for comparison would be to combine the average attendances of each derby team throughout the 2010-11 season and list them accordingly. Whilst it’s based on the most objective criteria available, such an approach still poses problems in terms of how we define a ‘local’ derby, which I’ve outlined below:

The top 20 derbies in Europe based on combined average attendance

	Team	Avg attendance	Team	Avg attendance	Total
1	Borussia Dortmund	80,478	Schalke 04	61,248	141,726
2	Manchester United	75,109	Manchester City	45,778	120,887
3	Real Madrid	70,736	Atletico Madrid	44,684	115,420
4	Bayern Munich	69,000	FC Nuremberg	42,019	111,019
5	FC Barcelona	79,390	RCD Espanyol	27,736	107,126
6	Milan	53,528	Internazionale	50,578	104,106
7	Arsenal	60,025	Tottenham Hotspur	35,689	95,714
8	Celtic	48,968	Rangers	45,305	94,237
9	FC Köln	47,752	B. Mönchengladbach	45,676	93,428
10	Hamburger SV	54,445	Werder Bremen	37,464	91,909
11	Newcastle United	47,718	Sunderland	40,011	87,729
12	Ajax	47,750	Feyenoord	39,676	87,426
13	Liverpool	42,775	Everton	36,039	78,814
14	Sevilla	36,000	Real Betis	31,095	67,095
15	Benfica	39,784	Sporting CP	27,003	66,787
16	Chelsea	41,435	Fulham	25,043	66,478
17	Aston Villa	37,220	Birmingham City	25,462	62,682
18	Roma	33,623	Lazio	27,842	61,465
19	Athletic Bilbao	35,815	Real Sociedad	25,289	61,104
20	Lyon	35,266	Saint-Etienne	25,096	60,362

Notes

-     All figures are based on Wikipedia’s top 70 clubs by average attendance. I haven't included any clubs that are outside the top 70, e.g. 1860 Munchen (whose average attendance of 20,000 would put the Munich derby in the top ten). This is because I'd like to source all the figures from the same place. However I don't think the list would change dramatically if this was the case. Fenerbahce (39,542) vs. Besiktas (26,249) would have made the list but the figures given are not for the 2010-11 season (and the Besiktas figures is unsourced).


-     I'd like to make very clear that the average attendance figures are for all games throughout the season - not for the individual derby games themselves.

-     The top ten teams without representation in the list are Marseilles (51,081), Eintracht Frankfurt (47,335), Napoli (47,210), FC Kaiserslautern (46,378), Hertha Berlin (45,761), Hannover 96 (43,948), Valencia (41,599), VfB Stuttgart (38,847), Porto (36,404) and Shakhtar Donetsk (33,897). I considered classifying Eintracht Frankfurt vs. FC Kaiserslautern as a derby (which with a combined total of 93,713 would’ve made the top ten) but decided not to (see below).

-     Any list of teams based on average attendance will always be dominated by Germany, where competetive one-city derbies are uncommon. I’ve chosen to include the four biggest regional ‘derbies’ and exclude all the others – although I think the Ruhrgebiet still has to be classed as a single agglomeration (as of course does Greater Manchester).


-     No team has been included twice. This means that Arsenal vs. Spurs is classed as the biggest London derby, with Chelsea vs. Fulham second. It should be stressed that there is a lot of overlap when it comes to the London derbies. These four teams have been chosen purely because they have the highest average attendances, not (at least in the case of the West London derby) because they have the fiercest rivalry.


-     The closest distance between two stadiums is of course Milan vs. Inter, where the two teams share the San Siro. The distance between Anfield and Goodison Park is 0.6 miles; between Estadio Da Luz and Estadio Jose Alvalade in Lisbon it is 1.4 miles. The longest distance between two clubs in the list is between Munich and Nuremburg (the two largest cities in Bavaria), which are around 100 miles apart, raising inevitable questions about how we define a derby. The distance between Hamburg and Bremen is around 60 miles, between Bilbao and San Sebastian around 50 miles, between Amsterdam and Rotterdam around 35 miles, between Lyon and Saint-Etienne around 30 miles. The distance between the Westfalenstadion and the Veltins Arena is exactly 17 miles, whilst there are exactly ten miles between St. James' Park and the Stadium of Light.

-     The smallest difference in ratio between the two average attendances are those between Milan vs. Inter, Köln vs. Borussia Mönchengladbach and Celtic vs. Rangers. The largest by a long way is Barcelona vs. Espanyol (although the difference between Bayern Munich vs. 1860 Munchen would have been bigger still).

Conclusion

I think the list above gives us a better insight into European football than the list of average attendances itself or the infamous Deloitte Football League, in showing where the real football powerhouses of Europe really are. On a personal note, it’s no surprise to see the Ruhrgebeit topping the list. I’ve only seen the Revierderby on TV but the atmosphere inside the stadium looks amazing.

The Manchester derby is of course growing in importance but we should stress that in domestic success terms it is still trumped by the Mersyside derby with only 21 league titles to their combined total of 27 – although this will of course soon be 22 (whichever way the Premier League goes this season) and that number will continue to increase whilst the other won’t. People from either side of the red/blue divide should be able to celebrate Manchester’s new-found role as the football capital of England, although we should also remember the city's role in the founding of the Football League in 1888 and that the top two record club home attendances in English football were both set at Maine Road: Man City vs. Stoke City in March 1934 (attended by 84,569) and Man Utd vs. Arsenal in January 1948 (83,260).

The list above also reflects Manchester’s and the Ruhr’s role as the two historic centres of the industrial revolution in Europe. I’ve written previously about how Manchester was the ninth biggest city in the world in 1900 with a population of 1,435,000 (the only provincial European city in the top ten), whilst the Ruhr’s population grew from 766,000 in 1900 to 4,900,000 in 1950 (making it the ninth biggest city in the world at that time). The imperial capitals of pre-War Europe fare poorly on the list of European football derbies: London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg may have been the biggest cities in the world in 1900 but it was in Manchester, the Ruhr, Barcelona, Madrid, Munich and Milan that football captured the popular imagination – something which is still reflected today in the list above.