América RJ

Rio de Janeiro's football calendar runs older than most of its clubs, and América belongs to the first generation of it: founded on 14 October 1904 by seven young men from Catumbi who had grown tired of Clube Atlético da Tijuca, and a year later one of the founding members of the city's league. The name honoured the continent rather than any single place, which suited a club that has spent most of its life defined by endurance rather than silverware.

That endurance shows in the trophy list. Seven Campeonato Carioca titles, but the last of them came in 1960, and the closest América has come to the national stage since was a semifinal run in the 1986 Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, four years after winning the Torneio dos Campeões. The club has not played in Brazil's top flight since 1988. Since 2000 it has bounced between the first and second divisions of the Rio state championship, dropping down in 2008, 2011 and 2018 and climbing back each time.

The ground reflects that same displacement. América left Andaraí, bought with money from selling a player to Juventus, for the Estádio Giulite Coutinho in Mesquita, out in the Baixada Fluminense, when it opened in January 2000 — a stadium far from the club's Tijuca roots, known locally as the Caldeirão da Baixada. The old social headquarters on Rua Campos Sales, home since 1911, came down for a shopping centre in 2024.

By 2022 the debts had reached R$80 million, with players going unpaid. In November 2023 the club elected Romário, a World Cup winner and one of the game's great goalscorers, as its president to try to sort out the finances — an unusual turn for a boardroom, and by América's recent history not even the strangest one.

None of that has touched the fixture that matters most to the club's supporters: the Clássico Bisavô against Bangu, first played in 1905 and reckoned the oldest derby in Rio football.