What’s the Best Football Team for Each Letter of the Alphabet?
ABC, is it really as easy as 123? Well not if you want to catalogue the best football team for each letter of the alphabet it isn’t. You are going to have some letters chock full of amazing teams and then some letters that force you to compare the Bolivian and Tanzanian league to see which is strongest. But worry not, I am, as always, fully committed to wasting my time and this momentous endeavour has no chance against me. Before we basically take a trip around the footballing world let’s get some ground rules set up.
The names clubs that are considered for each letter will have to start with said letter and obviously all names pertaining to organizational characteristics like Association, Football club or Sport Club, otherwise this list would be pretty dull. Second, the name of the club has to begin with the letter I am assigning it to. For example Borussia Dortmund will be considered for the letter B and not D for its location. And then I’ll somehow work out how to compare teams once we get to each letter.
We start with A. Let’s just get one thing out of the way, it’s not Arsenal, not even by a long shot. I would actually rank Aston Villa above the Gunners, even though they have less domestic trophies and have spent time in the second tier, just because of their 1982 European Cup and Super Cup win beating none other than Bayern and Barcelona respectively. Another cool shoutout goes to Al Ahly of Egypt, the greatest African team of all time. But there can only be one, and that one is Ajax Amsterdam. It even has both of their names starting with A.
Founded in 1900 the capital club rose to prominence during the late 1910s and 1920s and by the time the professional Eredivisie was founded they were one of the best teams in the league. Their first moment of glory came during the 1970s under revolutionary manager Rinus Michels who created a team that won three consecutive European cups with their Total football style. After both Michels and Johan Cruyff left for Barcelona, Ajax morphed into one of the best talent producing clubs in the world, something they are known for today.
During the 1980s Cruyff returned to the club, this time as a manager and a new period of European success followed under Louis van Gaal during the 90s. The culmination of Van Gaal’s young team was the 1995 Champions League title. This was the last European trophy won by Ajax as increased globalization of football and a concentration of wealth in the top 5 leagues has meant that Ajax has to sell their most talented players much earlier than it used to. However, every once in a while, a generation of players hangs around just long enough to produce something magic, like their 2019 Champions League run under Erik Ten Hag.
I bet for the letter B you might be thinking Barcelona, the club that basically owes their success to Ajax is a shoe-in. But no. Their recent success especially during the tiki taka period under Guardiola might be impressive, but I don’t think anyone can argue against the sheer dominance of Bayern. Not only has the Bavarian club won more league titles than Barcelona they have also translated their success to the European stage winning six European Cups to Barcelona’s 5.
More crucially, as far back as the 70s when Barcelona were nowhere to be seen on the European stage, Bayern were winning three European Cups in a row with one of the best teams the competition has ever seen. Further shoutouts for the letter B go to Benfica, who would have been much higher on the list had they not been cursed, Borussia Dortmund, Argentinian giants Boca Juniors and Beijing Guoan. The last mention was just to increase my social credit in the eyes of the CCP, you can disregard it.
Now for the letter C I have a bit of a conundrum. Do I take the high road and award it to Celtic, who are the greatest Scottish club of all time and were winning the European Cup with a fully homegrown squad around the same time Chelsea were getting promoted from the second tier, or do I take Chelsea’s recent European successes into consideration despite despising the way they became a giant club.
If this question had been posed right before Vladimir Putin instructed his lapdog Roman Abramovich to invest in England alongside other oligarchs Celtic would have taken it no questions asked. Chelsea’s solitary 1955 league title and their two European Cup winner’s cups were nothing compared to Celtic’s history. However, history is still being written even if we don’t like or agree with it so begrudgingly, I have to award it to the Blues. Before we move on, another shoutout goes to Red Star Belgrade winners of the 1991 European Cup, whose name begins with C in their native language.
When it comes to the D’s, the letters D that is, a certain type of club has a dominance on proceedings, the dynamos. No, not the magician we watched as kids or teenagers, the Eastern European clubs usually associated with the police forces of the Warsaw pact countries. Shoutouts go to Dinamo Bucharest, Dinamo Zagreb and their wonderful academy, 1981 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup winners Dinamo Tbilisi, 1972 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup winners Dynamo Moscow and the only non Dynamo team in this list, Dundee United who has a 100% win record against Barcelona.
But the top dog can only be Dynamo Kyiv. Despite being treated as a second rate team compared to the Moscow giants they still managed to become the most successful Soviet club and have won two Cup winners Cups in 1975 and 1986, also going on to beat the aforementioned Bayern in the 1975 European Super Cup. Another reason for their very deserved top spot is the amount of world class players they produced starting with Valeriy Lobanovskyi, continuing with Ballon d’Or winners Oleg Blokhin, and Ihor Belanov and finishing, for now, with Andriy Shevchenko who won his Ballon d’Or whilst at Milan.
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The letter E poses an interesting question: what is more important? Continental or domestic trophies? Because the two teams I am considering Everton and Estudiantes de la Plata are opposites in this regard. Everton’s 9 league titles and 5 FA Cups dwarf Estudiantes’ 6 league titles and solitary Argentine cup.
However, if we look at the continental stage Everton have only won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1985 whilst Estudiantes has four Copa Libertadores, the top title in South America. And you know what? I think that seals it for me, we’re gonna go for Estudiantes for the letter E, with Eintracht Frankfurt thrown in as an honourable mention alongside Everton.
We have a similar European vs South American debate for our next letter, which if you have been paying attention in school , you will know is F. On the one hand we have Fenerbahce, one of the top two most successful teams in Turkey and on the other Flamengo, ranked in the top 5 of Brazilian teams. So if Estudiantes took the victory earlier based on continental trophies I have to maintain some sort of rules for this list. That is why Flamengo’s three Copa Libertadores titles once again seal the win for the South Americans.
And if there are any Fener fans still watching you might want to look away and close your ears for the letter G. Yes Genoa were pioneers of Italian football and Grêmio have won three Libertadores but they can’t compare to Galatasaray’s success. 25 Turkish league titles and 19 Turkish Cups is an all time record and they are undoubtedly the best Turkish team of all time. To add to that they also tasted success on the European stage, which breaks the deadlock for me.
In the year 2000 Galatasaray assembled a squad containing some of the best Turkish players of all time like Ümit Davala and Hakan Şükür, and then they added the magic of Gheorghe Hagi to that team. The result? A UEFA Cup win against none other than Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal. After their victory, with Mario Járdel in their squad, they proved that the first European title won by a Turkish team wasn’t a fluke.
They stunned a Real Madrid side containing Iker Casillas, Roberto Carlos, Luís Figo, Claude Makelélé, Guti and Raúl to win the European Super cup. Okay Fenerbahçe fans, you can come back now, you didn’t miss anything. Oh, who won for the letter G? It was, erm, Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata from Argentina, yeah they have a cool name so they took the crown.
Anyway, on to H where there really is no debate. Sorry Huddersfield town fans but the cute dog you have on your crest is not enough to convince me. I am talking of course about Hamburg or Hamburger Sport-Verein to give them their full name. Nowadays they are known for battling relegation for what felt like a decade, always somehow escaping via the playoffs and then continuously failing to win promotion.
They are back in the Bundesliga for next season and will hope they can finally go back to the glory days of the club. Those glory days started in the 70s with shirt sponsors Hitachi that ushered in a new age of financial might for the club. This newfound wealth enabled them to lure Kevin Keegan away from Liverpool and whilst at the club he won two Ballon D’ors, the most of any English player. It was after Keegan left however that their crowning achievement came under genius manager Ernst Happel.
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Despite losing the UEFA Cup to IFK Göteborg one year earlier, HSV embarked on another European run, this time in Europe’s top competition. Dynamo Berlin, Olympiacos, Dynamo Kyiv and Real Sociedad proved accessible for the Germans but a seemingly insurmountable task awaited them in the final.
The Juventus side facing them, managed by mastermind Giovanni Trapattoni contained among others Dino Zoff, Gaetano Scirea and Claudio Gentile in goal and defence, Paolo Rossi in attack, all world cup winners one year prior and probably the best player on earth at the time, Michel Platini. However a solitary Felix Magath goal in the 9th minute meant that the superstars walked home empty handed.
For the team representing the letter I, Inter is a shoe in. Back in 1908 a group of AC Milan players who wanted to be more accepting of foreign players split from their club and formed Inter. The split favoured Inter and they became one of the best teams in Italy, especially after recruiting heavily from South America. Milan on the other hand did not win another league title from 1907 to 1951 and failed to win a single derby against Inter for 10 whole years.
Then in 1963 and 1964 Milano became the first ever city in Europe to win the European Cup with two different teams. After the grande inter era of the two European Cup wins a relatively low period followed with Inter only reaching the same heights in 2010 when Mourinho took them to the first treble in Italian football. They are currently still the best team in Italy but Champions League final capitulations has seen them squander the chance for a new continental trophy.
We immediately shift to Inter’s biggest rivals outside of their own city and a team that has the ultimate bottler attitude when it comes to European Cup finals, Juventus. Historically they are the richest team in Italy, being backed by the wealthy Agnelli family, owners of Fiat since 1922. This wealth has naturally translated to a wealth of trophies domestically, namely a record 36 Serie A titles and another record 15 Coppa Italia trophies.
However, with every new era of success a new controversy sprung up involving the Turin team. All the way back in 1913 Juventus were supposed to be relegated after finishing last but the Italian federation magically decided to increase the number of teams for the next season, saving Juve from the second tier. Then, during their period of dominance in the 90s reports emerged of blood doping being used by team doctors, similar to what cyclists were using at the tour the France. But since that form of doping was untraceable at the time no one was punished.
And then in 2006 Calciopoli came crashing down on the Italian champions seeing them relegated to the second tier in a somewhat harsh punishment. Having been burned once you’d think they would keep on the straight and narrow but just two years ago their entire board resigned after being found guilty of financial irregularities.
Whether the controversies surrounding the team are badmouthing by rival fans or true infringements on sportsmanship is up to you to decide but what is certain is that some form of karmic justice has been dealt to Juventus as they are the team that has lost the most European Cup finals in history, seven, whilst winning only two.
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The letter K is another one where there is no clear frontrunner and from the list of teams I could find, two stand out, both from Germany. Köln and Kaiserslautern are neck and neck in terms of their history. Both have spent time at the top of the German game winning a similar amount of titles and cups and both have spent time in the second tier.
Köln can claim a UEFA Cup Final in 1986 lost to Real Madrid to which Kaiserslautern can respond with their magic 1997-98 run when they won the second Bundesliga and the Bundesliga in a row. The two sets of fans could argue until the Earth gets swallowed up by the sun and still we couldn’t point to a definite winner. The tiebreaker for me is Kaiserslautern’s role in Germany’s first ever World Cup win.
The Miracle of Bern as it is often called saw the rather unfancied German team, whose country was still reeling from the destruction of the second world war defeat a Hungarian team that was considered to be the best in the world. The core of that German team consisted of Kaiserslautern players including captain Fritz Walter. So for helping Germany establish themselves as a top footballing nation in the world Kaiserslautern is my pick for K.
Just like with I and J, L is another clear-cut win. Liverpool is the most successful club in England and the fourth most successful team in Europe has no competition. I don’t think I need to tell you any more about them so we’ll move on. Right about now I’d like to extol the virtues of Liverpool’s biggest rivals Manchester United and pick them as winners for the letter M. Manchester United might be an institution of English football and have achieved incredible success under Sir Matt Busby and later under Sir Alex Ferguson, but I cannot ignore a team that has won more than double the amount of European trophies United has.
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I am of course talking about the Italian Red Devils, AC Milan. One of the most successful Italian clubs in the first part of the 20th century Milan rose to European prominence alongside rivals Inter during the 1960s when two legendary managers both playing catenaccio battled it out in Milan. AC Milan, who, after a period of decline during the 80s were bought out by a man whose picture should be put in the dictionary for the term corrupt slimy politician. During the Berlusconi era Milan became the opposite of rivals Juve, not always winning at home, but almost always winning in Europe.
On to the next letter and Nagoya Grampus Eight might have a very cool name and Nürnberg might have been former record German champions but Nottingham Forest is the clear winner. But it nearly didn’t come to it. Up until 1975 Forest were just another English club. And then they made the best decision a club could make. They signed a headstrong and opinionated manager who had lasted just 44 days in his previous tenure.
That manager, Brian Clough alongside his assistant Peter Taylor brought about the most successful era in the club’s history. Two European cups and one league title made them heroes of English football and the only team in the world to have more continental titles than domestic ones. However, as Clough aged out of management the team declined and they spent nearly thirty years as a fallen giant in the lower tiers. Nowadays they are back in the big leagues with help from shady Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis and are looking to reclaim their lost glory.
Speaking of Marinakis, his other club Olympiakos deserves an honourable mention but sadly cannot contend with Olympique de Marseille as neither can their rivals Olympique Lyonnais. Marseille’s domestic trophies put them on par with any team in France, but it is their 1993 Champions League win that sets them apart from all other clubs whose names begin with the letter O. However contentious, due to the Ligue 1 match-fixing scandal that erupted soon after their win, their European crown has not been contested.
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Fellow Greek side and 1971 European Cup finalists Panathinaikos also miss out on their respective letter as do Parma, 3-time Libertadores winners and most successful Brazilian side Palmeiras and more importantly PSG. Why do they miss out, you might ask? Well, let’s just put it this way, 40 years before PSG were even founded this team’s players were winning the world cup, then 20 years before PSG’s founding, they won it again and 2009, when PSG were battling crisis after crisis this club was named the South American club of the century.
I am talking of course about Peñarol Montevideo. Peñarol are the all time greatest Uruguayan club of all time with a staggering 52 league titles since the league’s inception in 1900, that is a title every 2.4 seasons for you stat lovers out there. Whilst I despise anyone looking down on leagues from outside of Europe or outside the Big 5, I can give some credit to this argument since it is a somewhat smaller league, especially compared to Argentina and Brazil’s championships. However the club has also tasted continental success on 5 occasions making them the third most decorated team in the Copa Libertadores. So for me, the greatest South American club of the 20th century, some might even argue of all time, has to take the win.
Before we get to R and arguably the greatest European club of all time, there is the not so small matter of the letter Q to deal with. Whereas most letters so far have had one or more standout teams, we are starting to scrape the barrel with this one. The three standout clubs are Queens Park, one of the pioneers of Scottish football who dominated the game in the 1900s even winning two FA Cups, Queens Park Rangers, who haven’t had much success except for a solitary league cup in 1967 and Qarabağ, who have been the best Azerbaijani team since the 2010s.
However they are also a symbol of state investment in football in order to project soft power by Azerbaijan and a symbol of Azeri rule over the majority Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh area, an area that saw multiple crimes against humanity mainly committed against Armenians that no one seems to speak about. Combine that with the fact I am a football nostalgic I will give this one to Queens Park for the simple fact that good pure football needs to be recognized.
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And now for the aforementioned R. Hate them all you want, Real Madrid deserve recognition. Despite the help from a dictator, despite their blatant disregard for any other identity than buy the best players, despite all of the refereeing decisions, despite the club and its fans acting like the most spoiled uneducated ignorant and shameless brats, despite all of that Real Madrid are probably the greatest football club of all time, if you can ignore everything wrong with it. Before we move on, River Plate deserves a shoutout too.
The letter S provides us with a number of honourable mentions, Slavia and Sparta Prague, São Paulo, Sevilla, Sporting and most importantly Steaua Bucharest. It was between Steaua and my top pick and I have to say the period between 1986 and 1989 when they won the European Cup, reached the semi-finals and another final does weigh pretty heavily in their favour, as do their records for most Romanian league titles and Cups but I simply cannot ignore the club that gave us Pelé.
Santos might not be as dominant on the internal stage, winning only eight of the hyper competitive Campeonato Brasileiro Série A titles but they have three Copa Libertadores. Apart from that you only have to mention Neymar, Coutinho, Dorval, Carlos Alberto and Pele and that for me sways the win in favour of Santos.
And now onto T and what a surprise we have here, Tottenham win another trophy. Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse. Tottenham Hotspur are the Milhouse of football, I have just decided. Apart from being a meme and a source of cheap laughs for third rate YouTubers (like me), Tottenham are quite a respectable team in terms of their history.
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Their greatest period of success came during the 60s when they won the first division alongside three FA Cups and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. Since then they added three more Europa League titles to their trophy cabinet and now that the curse is broken, who knows they might even go on to win some more. Oh no, Any ways we must move on.
And now we get into the weird dark part of the alphabet, the letters you sang quickly in school to finally get the song over with so you could go play with your friends. Not many clubs to choose from and not many of them good. At least U has some good teams like Udinese or various university teams like Chilean giants Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica. But there can only be one winner and here it’s Urawa Red Diamonds. Not only are they one of the best Japanese clubs of all time but they are also joint-second in the all-time AFC Champions League rankings, recently overtaken by Al Hilal.
V is also pretty tame as Vélez Sarsfield, VfB Stuttgart and Villarreal can be mentioned and Valencia be given the crown. Historically one of the top clubs outside of the Barcelona Real Madrid duopoly alongside Athletic Club Valencia have also tasted success on the European stage, as well as heavy disappointment.
Their UEFA Cup and UEFA Cup winners’ cup wins in 2004 and 1980 were somewhat soured by two consecutive losses in the Champions League finals of 2000 and 2001. Their status in Spanish football is currently ever dwindling as even rivals Villarreal are starting to become more successful and that is all due to the disgusting ownership of the worm Peter Lim who has been running the club into the ground for the past several years.
W is an all English affair with West Brom and Wolves nearly missing out to West Ham. The Hammers’ 1965 Cup Winners Cup triumph and their recent Conference league title sway my opinion towards them and had wolves not lost the 1972 UEFA Cup final the discussion might have been a bit longer. But even then you have Bobby Moore; Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst who, Gottfried Dienst, were instrumental in England winning the 1966 World Cup. All three players came through the youth ranks of West Ham.
And now for X. Jesus. Apart from some teams I will not dare to pronounce from Guatemala, China and Uzbekistan, two stand out, Xérez, a mostly second tier club from Spain and Xanthi. And since Xanthi have not only played regular top flight football but have also played European football and reached the Final of the Greek Cup they are pretty clear winners. Not only that they have an excellent training and youth centre so who knows they might become even better in the future.
Y has some more teams to consider but neither of them are very good. The standout among them was Yokohama F Marinos but that was until, like a catholic priest bored and in need of some entertainment, I saw Young Boys, from Switzerland. Apart from their domestic success, Young Boys have also reached a European Cup semifinal in 1959 and the quarter finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1988. And they have managed all of that despite having one of the most unfortunate names in all of football.
And we have finally come to the end of the list. Just one more letter to cover, Z. FC Zürich and Zenit could make good cases for themselves had it not been for the rivals of a team I mentioned right at the beginning. Al Ahly might be the best African team of all time but sadly missed out to Ajax. Their rivals Zamalek, widely considered the second best African team can take some pride in one upping their more successful enemies, even though it is just a fictitious award in some weird list made by a YouTuber with way too much time on his hands.
By: Eduard Holdis / @He_Ftbl
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / ANP – Getty Images