World Cup 2014: The most fanatical soccer cities in the world
White-sand beaches, amazing mountains, the world’s largest rain forest, cosmopolitan cities, boffo music, wild night life and plenty of gorgeous eye candy — no wonder 600,000 international travelers will find Brazil a great destination for the month-long 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer championship, which begins June 12. If you’re not there for the soccer, you’ll still find plenty to entertain yourself; for a rundown, see latimes.com/brazilworldcup. While teams from 32 countries compete in a dozen cities across Brazil, culminating in the championship match in Rio de Janeiro on July 13, fans around the world will cheer from their own soccer-crazed towns. We’ve selected a few of the world’s most-fanatical soccer cities so you can applaud or cry with the locals — or enjoy some crowd-free tourism while their eyes are elsewhere.
--April Orcutt
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The Spanish founded Montevideo in 1764 on the east side of the Río de la Plata as a buffer against Portuguese expansion from the north.
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Mayas, Aztecs, Olmecs and other Mesoamericans competed on stone ball courts back to 1400 BC. Fast-forward to today, and the city supports three primary soccer teams.
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Leonardo da Vinci, who painted his famous “The Last Supper” in Milan, also helped with the hydraulic engineering of the city’s canals, most of which have since disappeared.
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Barcelona’s history has bounced around like a soccer ball, but that’s to be expected when people — a group that has included Carthaginians, Castilians and Catalans — have been living in the area for 37,000 years.
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Manchester, about 200 miles northwest of London, traces its origins to AD 79, when Roman general Agricola built a wooden fort named Mamucium on the bank of the River Irwell.
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If you look closely at pictures of the Titanic, you can see the word “Liverpool” on the ship’s stern, just below “Titanic.”
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Sports have been important in Greece since at least 776 BC, when the first recorded Olympic Games took place on the plains of Olympia.
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Marseille has a long history as a feisty place. Greeks founded it 2,600 years ago as a trading post.
