All aboard the sadness train: These clubs have put their fans through some tough times in the modern era. ESPN.com Illustration

Sports are cruel. There, we said it. They play with our emotions, mess with our hearts, fill us with joy and smash it just as quickly. Every team has known what it's like to lose a big game, but how about a full season of losing? How about a decade? How about a lifetime?

There are unhappy fan bases all over soccer, but if your definition of pain is not winning every trophy, or getting knocked out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals, think again. You've not heard anything yet.

The ESPN FC Misery Index is a chance to shine a light on those teams that have endured far more than their fair share of sadness in the modern era, to let those fans tell their stories and explain why it has been so tough to be a fan.

Jump to: Botafogo | Cruz Azul | Espanyol | Everton | Hamburg | Malaga | Man United | New England Revolution | Rangers | Sunderland

Botafogo: Searching for the good vibes of 1958

Botafogo used to routinely produce Brazil's best players for some of its most iconic teams. These days, they're close to relegation and financially dwarfed by their bigger, more successful rivals, Flamengo. Alexandre Loureiro/Getty Images

"There are things that only happen to Botafogo."

It is a common phrase in Rio de Janeiro football, usually uttered by fans of the club. The depth of self-pity is revealing and, in a sense, understandable.

When older Botafogo fans speak of their club's golden age, it is not rose-tinted nostalgia. They really did grow up watching the legends. The Brazil teams that won the World Cup in 1958, '62 and '70, thereby establishing the country as football's spiritual home, were basically formed by the Santos team that included Pele, and Botafogo, which contributed great winger Garrincha, second in the pantheon of the Brazilian game, and epic left-back Nilton Santos, nicknamed the "encyclopaedia" because he knew it all. Didi and Gerson, the Selecao midfield pass masters, were Botafogo players, as were Mario Zagallo on the wing, Amarildo, who stepped in so well when Pele was injured in '62, and Jairzinho, who scored in every game in the magical 1970 campaign.

All of them are commemorated with banners in the stadium every time Botafogo play at home, but the contrast between the quality of the players on the banners and those on the field is unkind to those who currently wear the black-and-white stripes. Recent teams, even when they have been relatively successful, have rarely been more than workmanlike. Twice this century, Botafogo spent a season in the second division, and they go into this campaign with relegation a much higher possibility than the remote prospect of winning the title.

Meanwhile, making matters worse, local rivals Flamengo go from strength to strength. They are champions of Brazil and South America, boasting a squad with the kind of depth that is beyond the dreams of Botafogo and its faithful.

This chasm is fairly new. Botafogo's fans are a passionate, but relatively small, band of brothers and sisters. They cannot hope to match the immense size of Flamengo's national support base, which the club have learned to monetise. They are rich while Botafogo are deep in debt, and the latter's hopes are now pinned on a change of status.

Like all the traditional Brazilian teams, Botafogo are a social club with a president elected by the members. Attempts are in motion to turn the team into a business. Many see this as a panacea, but it raises an obvious question: Where will the money come from?

In the short term, Botafogo have boosted their international profile with the bold signing of veteran Japanese midfielder Keisuke Honda, who has instantly become a club hero. For those born into an expectation of greatness, mediocrity is even harder to stomach and the fans are yearning for Honda's left foot to conjure a spell and turn back the clock.

There's a popular book in Brazil called "Happy 1958, The Year That Never Should Have Ended." The country was booming, architecture was at its peak, bossa nova was taking hold and Brazil won their first World Cup with a team full of Botafogo players. If a time machine was available to take people back there, fans of Botafogo would be at the head of the queue. -- Tim Vickery

Cruz Azul: Failure so bad, it made the dictionary

Cruz Azul's inability to win a playoff final has reached historic new depths in recent years, so much so that the team's name is now a slang term for failure. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

There's only one club whose name has spawned it's own verb: Cruz Azul. And its meaning is not particularly flattering.

According to Diccionario Popular, cruzazulear is "to fail at anything, in any moment, when everything is in your favor and you think nothing can ruin it." An example: "You were doing so well in school and you Cruz Azul'd on the final exam."

Cruz Azul's penchant for screwing things up has even spread into popular culture. At Mexico games, wearing Cruz Azul shirts is frowned upon. If El Tri loses, photos of said fans often go viral on social media. (Mexico fans reportedly tried giving Cruz Azul shirts to rival supporters at the 2018 World Cup in a bid to pass the bad luck along. In a sense, it worked: Mexico beat Germany and South Korea to escape their group before losing to Brazil in the round of 16.)

The club is still considered one of Mexico's "big four," but La Maquina is without a league title since 1997. Since then, Cruz Azul has finished runners-up on six occasions and gone through 14 head coaches. The last title winner, Luis Fernando Tena, has also been employed by the club twice since winning the championship.

If there was one game to sum up Cruz Azul's misery, it would be the 2013 Clausura final second leg. La Maquina was 2-0 up on aggregate against city rival Club America in the 88th minute at Estadio Azteca. The drought appeared to be all but over: just don't concede twice. Cruz Azul did just that, with Aquivaldo Mosquera pulling one back and then America goalkeeper Moises Munoz leveling the score with a diving header that was deflected in by a Cruz Azul player on the last play of the game. America won on penalties.

"It didn't hurt as much [as previous final defeats] because it was more of the same thing. I came to accept it. But [the loss in 2018] is the one that really hurt," explained Oscar Nanco-Gonzalez, a lifelong fan who runs an English-language Cruz Azul Twitter account.

The most recent was another loss to Club America in the 2018 Apertura final. Cruz Azul had led the regular-season standings in 12 of the 17 rounds of games and finished top of the table, but a hard-fought first leg that ended 0-0 was ruined by a second-half capitulation in the return. The Mexico City establishments that had offered free beer if Cruz Azul lifted the trophy were spared from giving away a single drop.

Owned and run by a cement company, Cruz Azul plays its home games inside the huge Estadio Azteca, and attendances are dwindling; after three rounds of league games in 2020, Cruz Azul had the lowest average attendance: 13,583.

"Sometimes, I feel the players are just there to get the check," said Nanco-Gonzalez. "For a lot of us, it wouldn't be just a job. If I could play five minutes in an official Liga MX match, I would drop everything and do it for free just because I'd bust my ass working for that team no matter what."

After winning seven of their eight titles between 1969 and 1980, Cruz Azul's relevance as one of Mexico's great clubs is slipping away. -- Tom Marshall

Espanyol: Living in Barca's shadow

Espanyol, who also play and live in Barcelona, are constantly seen as an afterthought by the city's own media and its bustling tourism industry. David Ramos/Getty Images

Espanyol call themselves the "marvellous minority," but most of the time, there's very little to marvel over. They have a hated rival, but their rivals can't even be bothered reciprocating. This is the football club that doesn't exist, or at least that's the way they're made to feel sometimes. FC Barcelona are "more than a club" according to their slogan; the city of Barcelona is more than a club given that Espanyol play there, too, just three miles from the Camp Nou, but nobody notices, let alone cares.

Barca cast a mighty shadow, and it's dark and miserable in there.

Espanyol's history goes back 119 years. A founding member of the league, only four teams have spent more seasons in primera, and in a cumulative table they would be seventh all-time, but they've never won it or really been close. Their neighbours, meanwhile, have won it 26 times, plus 30 Cups and five European Cups. Espanyol have won only four trophies in history (four Copa del Reys). Barcelona are 90 ahead. No one has more European titles than Barcelona; Espanyol got to two finals and lost them both. In 1988, they arrived in Leverkusen having won the UEFA Cup final first leg 3-0 and still didn't win, going down in a penalty shootout that defines them. Or so it goes.

It was late and the newspaper La Vanguardia had already printed front pages about Espanyol's victory, which had to be binned, but some got their hands on them. "Sometimes I look at that and I sigh," says writer Enric Gonzalez. He writes about Espanyol as having a faith born of failure. It is rooted in "the existential void of those who suspect, with good reason, that God abandoned them forever," he says. Ernesto Valverde, the former Barcelona and Espanyol manager, who was on the bench the night they lost the UEFA Cup, says: "There's a part of the character, influenced by Leverkusen, that says, 'We're going down this year.'"

The worst thing is that this year they might, too. They're dead last, with 18 points from 23 games and a goal difference of minus-21. Goodness knows they're miserable now.

"It can seem like the whole of Barcelona is Barca, but that feeling for Espanyol is very deep in some places," Valverde says. Yet the eclipse can feel total; it can feel deliberate too, or at least self-perpetuating. Few in positions of power or celebrity rush to identify themselves with Espanyol or take a seat in their directors' box instead of the one at the Camp Nou. In 2013, the city's famous Christopher Columbus monument was dressed in a Barcelona shirt, pointing out to sea; no one would ever have contemplated putting him in blue-and-white, and why would they? Espanyol felt left out, ignored, but it was nothing new. (Better yet, those responsible for putting the jersey on the statue paid the Barcelona city council for the ability to do it ahead of the derby.)

"Espanyol's fans feel trodden on; they are supporters who lived pushed aside by media, in the street ... they make us invisible," former coach Quique Sanchez Flores says.

play 1:37 Marcotti's ode to Manchester United's transfer failings Gab Marcotti delivers a poetic reminder of Manchester United's recent transfer business.

Espanyol vs. Barcelona is not a rivalry like Atletico and Real Madrid, not least because it is not much of a rivalry at all, which is even worse. The last time Espanyol finished ahead of Barcelona was almost 80 years ago, and no one expects them to ever do so again; their budget is one-12 the size of their neighbours. At times in Barcelona, it can seem like no one at all supports Espanyol. Sarria, their spiritual home, is long gone. They spent over a decade at Montjuic, feeling like they're in exile. Now they have moved out of the city, prompting Gerard Pique to pointedly call them Espanyol de Cornella, not Barcelona. That stung, but at least there was some rivalry there, some attention. The rest of the year, there isn't.

"When I was very young at school, there were 40 kids and of those that really liked football, only one supported Espanyol: me," says Carlos Maranon. His father was one of the club's best players ever, he played in the youth system there, and he is now the editor of Cinemania magazine. He likens Espanyol to two literary figures brought to film. "There's something of Don Quixote about them," he says, "And then there's Asterix: this idea of a tiny force resisting."

Espanyol is not a small club. There are 30,000 members. They are preparing for the Europa League round of 32. That said, the joy was instantly removed when their manager (Pablo Machin), key centre-back (Mario Hermoso) and best centre-forward (Borja Iglesias) all left, leaving a relegation battle behind. Typical.

There is a kind of perverse pleasure in that status and this misery. On Dec. 27, Abelardo Fernandez arrived at the RCDE stadium on a mission to rescue them from relegation, their third manager of the 2019-20 season alone. "Maybe I'm a masochist," he said of joining Espanyol. He'll fit right in. -- Sid Lowe

Everton: The other team in Liverpool

Everton haven't won at Liverpool in over two decades. Their best chance to break the streak came against the Reds' youth team in the FA Cup... and Everton still lost. Daniel Chesterton/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

There is nothing worse than supporting a football team that always fall short when it comes to winning, so imagine what it feels like to be an Everton fan. Not only has their club, one of the most historic names in English football, failed to win anything at all this century, but Evertonians have also had to endure their own team's demise coinciding with the rise of Liverpool, their annoyingly successful neighbours one mile to the east across Stanley Park.

Plenty of other English clubs have suffered trophy droughts as long, or longer, than Everton's, but none can claim to have been hit by the double whammy of being bad at the same as their biggest rivals becoming the best side in the world. Newcastle, Leeds United, Wolves and even Tottenham have had it tough over the years, either with ultra-successful neighbours or self-inflicted failures, but nothing compares to being an Evertonian.

Let's just take a brief history lesson to explain why Everton have had it worse than any other major club. It all started back in 1891, when, after a dispute involving the club president, Everton left their original home -- that's right, Anfield -- to move to Goodison Park. A year later, Liverpool moved into the vacant Anfield and claimed it as their own, meaning Everton created their biggest problem by handing Liverpool their home stadium, which has become synonymous with the Reds' success.