América Mineiro

The oldest fixture on the Belo Horizonte calendar pits América Mineiro against Cruzeiro, the Clássico Mineiro Vovô, and beneath that stands a rivalry that runs closer to home: Atlético Mineiro, born the year after América, has spent more than a century contesting the same stretch of the city. América got there first.

The club traces itself to a group of boys aged 11 to 13 who drew lots in 1912 to settle on a name, and whatever was decided that day has stuck ever since — same name, same crest. Black joined the original white and green a year later, after a merger with another local side; between 1933 and 1942 the team wore red and white instead, in protest at the professionalisation of the game, before the vertical green-and-black stripes settled into place for good from 1971 onward. The nickname, Coelho, comes with a mascot rather than a story: a white cartoon rabbit with red eyes, drawn by the caricaturist Fernando Pieruccetti.

Nothing in the club's history matches what happened between 1916 and 1925, when América won ten straight Campeonato Mineiro titles — still a record in Brazilian football. Sixteen state championships in total make it the most successful side in Minas Gerais, though the run since has come in scattered years: 1948, 1951, 1957, 1971, 2001, 2016. Nationally, the club has twice topped Série B, in 1997 and 2017, and won Série C once, in 2009, without ever adding a Copa do Brasil to the collection — a 2020 semi-final remains the closest it has come.

Home games are played at the Estádio Independência, holding just over 23,000, with talk of expansion to 30,000 that has yet to move beyond talk. The youth setup has done its own quiet work in the meantime, taking the 2011 national under-20 title and eighteen Minas Gerais junior championships, the latest in 2021.

None of it, though, settles anything against Cruzeiro. The Vovô is the derby that defines the season regardless of where either club sits in the table, and it is the one América's supporters measure everything else against.