Just adding another subject to this great thread: When talking about success we must also think about the club's structure. I was browsing Sao Paulo's new website and saw the pictures of our youth center, CFA Cotia: http://www.saopaulofc.net/estrutura/cfa-cotia The professionals have their own training center, called CT Barra Funda. The pictures are on the website as well.
I think the club structure is a means to the end of player development within the club ranks. This is what I meant by "cantera" when listing the criteria to rank the success of a sports institution. What is interesting is that in the god-awful American sports, there is no concept of a cantera. Clubs, actually "franchises" (leave it to the Americans to commercialize everything ), don't have any youth development...it is left to colleges and high schools to do this for them, meaning, in my opinion, there is very little if any sense of attachment to a team that "raised you" so to speak.
yea are you also talking about other parts of the club besides futbol? In Argentina, most clubs are much more than futbol teams River for example has a swimming team, field hockey team, tennis, water polo, handball, basketball, volleyball, polo, in mens and womens in all sports and also a gym and other facitilies the socios can use, this is in addition to having a school, cafeteria, a museum, cafe, and a place where people can have asados we then have youth division in futbol from reserva to novena. we have multiple arenas and stadia, we have one training center in Ezeiza and another in Nuñez next to our main stadium
I believe most of brazilian big clubs have these facilities for their socios, but that's only my guess. I know São Paulo have supported some athletes like olympic champion Adhemar Ferreira da Silva and the boxer Eder Jofre. Currently I'm aware we have a futsal team and we suppor Maurren Maggi. Flamengo used to have teams from a lot of olympic sports, but they cut them down to save money.
Actually olympic sports of Flamengo is not cutting money, is investing alot. We hired Cesar Cielo, the fastest swimmer in the world, olympic champion. Flamengo basketball team is very strong was SA champion, water polo is national champion, rowing in NT champion, Gymnastic has world champions athletes, and is NT champion, Synchronized swimming is NT champion and etc...
I believe Flamengo supports the twins Bia and Bianca in the synchronized swimming. Take a look and eat your words
Flamengo was brazilian champion in 2009. Be patient Ronaldinho, and Adriano (if he come back) will humiliate your team