How to Bet on Fluminense

The story starts on 21 July 1902, when a group of young aristocrats and football fans led by Oscar Cox set up the club in Laranjeiras, Rio de Janeiro. A breakaway in 1911 led to the creation of the football team of Flamengo, and by 1922 the club had 4,000 members and a stadium that impressed clubs in Europe. The first national title arrived in 1970, and in 1984 Fluminense were Brazilian champions again, in a final against Vasco da Gama. A controversial penalty shootout defeat to Internacional cost them the Copa do Brasil final in 1992. A disastrous campaign meant relegation from Série A in 1996, and by 1998 the club had fallen to Série C. The rise back included the Copa do Brasil in 2007, a win over Figueirense in the final, and a run to the Libertadores final in 2008 including a 6–0 rout of Arsenal de Sarandí on the way. In 2022 Fluminense finished third in the Brazilian Championship with an offensive, fluid team.

Fluminense play at the Maracanã Stadium in the Maracanã District, a giant arena with 78,838 seats that opened in 1950. It was built for the 1950 World Cup and has primarily served the four biggest clubs in Rio. Building work dragged on until 1965, 17 years after it began, and a Rio Championship final between Flamengo and Fluminense there in 1963 drew a crowd of over 194,000. A closure of nine months across 2005 and 2006 preceded the reopening in January 2007 as an all-seated ground, and a major project from 2010 prepared it for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Before all that, the club's home was Laranjeiras, which opened in 1919 and held 25,000 after 1922. Playing in the Maracanã gives Fluminense an enormous stage on which a big crowd can lift the team.

The great rivalry is with Flamengo. The Fla–Flu Derby, also called the Derby of Crowds, is bound up with the club's own origins, because the starting players left Fluminense to build the football side of Flamengo, and Fluminense still won the first meeting. That mystique has given the derby a place among the greatest in Brazil and South America, with nearly 200,000 spectators at the Maracanã in the biggest crowd for a club game. Vasco da Gama bring the Giants' Derby and Botafogo the Grandpa Derby. Corinthians meet them in a fixture that dates back to 1933, a friendly that opened Fluminense's life as a professional side. L.D.U. Quito built an international rivalry by beating Fluminense in the Libertadores final of 2008 and again in the Copa Sudamericana final a year after. In the derbies, form counts for less than the occasion.