Flamengo

The Maracanã holds 78,838 now, and it carries an official name few use — Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho. Flamengo did not build it; the club simply became the tenant history remembers, the red and black filling the stands so often that the ground reads as theirs by default rather than by deed.

The club itself started somewhere else entirely, as a rowing outfit on 17 November 1895. Football only arrived in 1911, and it arrived through a grievance: a group of players walked out of Fluminense and brought the sport with them. The breakaway set up the fixture that still matters most in Rio, the Fla-Flu, first played in 1912 — the same year Flamengo's football side took the field for its own opening match, a 16-2 win over Mangueira that gave little hint of the rivalry to come.

By 1914 Flamengo had its first Campeonato Carioca title, an early entry in what became the longest-running habit in the club's history — 40 state championships, the last string of them taken in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The nickname Urubu, the vulture, traces back further into the crowd than any trophy: supporters brought the bird symbol to the terraces in 1924, and it stuck.

Continentally, Flamengo has won the Copa Libertadores four times, the first in 1981 against Cobreloa, the most recent in 2025 against Palmeiras. That 1981 side went further still, beating Liverpool 3-0 to take the Intercontinental Cup — a result the club could not repeat when it met Liverpool again in the 2019 Club World Cup final, this time on the losing side. Domestically, the Brasileirão has come nine times, with 2025 the latest addition.

None of it moves far from where it began. Flamengo remains a rowing club that picked up a football team along the way, and the football team never quite let go of the name.