I would also like to add some comments about European football in response to the OP:
Eutactic has provided a good overview of the European leagues in general. I’ve followed the English Premiership and Italian Serie A more than any other league, and just want to add a little bit to the various teams’ characteristics.
One thing you should keep in mind is that most countries have at least three or more divisions within their league, and the boundaries are fluid between these divisions. If you have enough points to finish at the top of your division, then you’ll get promoted up to the division above you in the following season. Conversely, if you end up with so few points that you’re at the bottom of your division, you’ll be relegated to the next lower division.
What this means is there are lots of famous sides who aren’t even playing in the top division of their league. Wolverhampton Wanderers and Nottingham Forest are just two examples of English clubs with a proud history who currently are stuck in the First Division (it gets confusing, but since the 1990s, the First Division in England is actually the second-highest. The “Premiership” is the highest division. It’s a long story).
Let’s just focus on the Premiership, shall we? OK. Your top teams, the perennial challengers for the league title are Manchester United, Arsenal (from north London–er, actually, they’re originally from South London, but for most of their history they’ve played in the northern London neighbourhood of Islington), and Liverpool, roughly in that order. Liverpool used to dominate England during the 80s, but ever since then, Man U has taken a near strangle-hold over the title, only losing it on a few occasions and usually to Arsenal. As you might expect, these sides are generally resented by most other clubs’ supporters.
However, if you are looking for one team to root against, it must be Man U. They really are the equivalent of the NY Yankees. Smug bastards. Heh, i kid–they really are a very good side. Just too friggin’ successful. Pretty much everybody except Man U’s own supporters hates them, although these hard feelings are particularly strong from their traditional rivals, Manchester City… and from Leeds United… and from Liverpool… and from Arsenal… and so forth and so on.
Those three teams have won lots and lots of trophies. The league trophy is typically considered the standard for excellence, but just to rub it in they’ve also won the FA cup (England’s national cup, played as a knock-out tournament involving all sides from the league, including the lower divisions which the Premier sides wouldn’t normally play against); Man U and Liverpool have also won the European Cup/Champions League (tournament played among all the best sides from the European leagues).
Those three sides normally lurk somewhere within the top five of the league. Outside of them, you have several sides that every once in a while mount a strong challenge for the title. Chelsea is a good example, though it’s been eons since they won the league. Newcastle United posed quite a challenge this season. Leeds United was a threat a couple of seasons ago, even playing in the Champions League–although they’ve really played poorly this season and only recently pulled themselves out of the relegation zone!
Then you’ve got your mid-table sides–teams which can’t quite compete with the big ones, but which are competent enough to stave off relegation. Tottenham Hotspur–northern London team; traditional rivals of Arsenal–would fit into this category. So would Aston Villa (from a suburb of Birmingham), and Everton (from Liverpool, and appropriately enough, the traditional rivals of Liverpool). Their fortunes shift a bit from season to season; as SDMB poster Everton can tell you, Everton’s enjoyed a pretty good season this time around. (there’s quite a bit of fluidity between these sides and the occasional title-challengers i just mentioned–every few seasons or so, they’ll change places. In any case, both types of teams rarely break into the top three spots, even though they rarely have too much trouble keeping away from the deadly relegation zone).
Other clubs linger around the bottom of the table, sometimes pulling themselves up, but often getting dragged down into a relegation battle. Charlton, a south London side, has to deal with this pretty frequently, and they’ve played quite a bit in the lower divisions. Middlesborough has had rather better luck, but they’ve always got to be looking over their shoulder at the teams behind them. Manchester City has had a terrible time with this situation; they’ve been bouncing up and down for several seasons–not quite good enough for the Premiership, but too good for most First Division teams.
It’s hard to say who would be the Chicago Cubs of the Premiership. The problem is, if any team played so consistently poorly as that, they’d just keep getting relegated. For those sides which have stayed up near the top divisions, i’d say Coventry City. They were never a very good side, and they’ve never won the league, but somehow, miraculously, they managed to stay up in the top division for many, many years–if i’m not mistaken, they were in “top-flight” football (the old First Division and then the Premiership after that was created) for one of the longest stretches of any club in England, although i think Arsenal holds the record. I can’t think of any real reason to dislike Coventry either, so i guess that kind of compares to the Cubs.
Unfortunately for Coventry, they finally got relegated at the end of the 2001-02 season, and it’s hard to say if they’ll ever be back up again. They’ve been terrible this season in Division One.
Hm. Maybe somebody else can think of a better team to fit the same category of “pitied underachiever” in English football. QPR is probably deserving of a lot of pity themselves–they’ve never won the league, though they’ve come close; they’ve never won the FA Cup. And they’ve been dropping like a stone through the league’s divisions–they were once in the Premiership, then got relegated to the First Division, stayed there for a little while, and then dropped down to the Second Division. They might make it back up to the First Division at the end of this season, though. But they’re a London side, and there’s a lot of rivalry among the London teams, so i imagine not everyone feels pity for their plight.
So i guess my answer is “dunno.” 
). We have ex-pat supporters all over the world and there’s a team in Chile called Everton that was inspired by a South American tour we made in 1909.