Real Madrid CF


Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional association football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, the top tier of Spanish football.
Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, the club has traditionally worn a white home kit. The honorific title 'Real' is Spanish for "Royal" and was bestowed by Alfonso XIII in 1920. Real Madrid have played their home matches in the 78,297-capacity Santiago Bernabéu since 1947. Unlike most European sporting clubs, Real Madrid's members have owned and operated the club throughout its history. The club is one of the most widely supported in the world and the most followed sports club across social media. It was estimated to be worth $6.6 billion in 2024, making it the world's most valuable football club. In 2024, it became the first football club to make €1 billion in revenue. The Madrid anthem is the "Hala Madrid y nada más".
Real Madrid is one of the most successful football clubs in the world and the most decorated club in Europe. In domestic football, the club has won 71 trophies; a record 36 La Liga titles, 20 Copa del Rey, 13 Supercopa de España, a Copa Eva Duarte and a Copa de la Liga. In International football, Real Madrid have won a record 35 trophies: a record 15 European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles, a record six UEFA Super Cups, two UEFA Cups, a joint-record two Latin Cups, a record one Iberoamerican Cup, and a record nine world championships. Madrid has been ranked joint first a record number of times in the IFFHS Club World Ranking. In UEFA, Madrid ranks first in the all-time club ranking.
As one of the three founding members of La Liga never relegated from the top division, Real Madrid has many long-standing rivalries, most notably El Clásico with Barcelona and El Derbi Madrileño with Atlético Madrid. The club established itself as a major force in Spanish and European football during the 1950s and 60s, winning five consecutive and six overall European Cups. This success was replicated on the domestic front, with Madrid winning 12 league titles in 16 years. This team, which included Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás, Paco Gento and Raymond Kopa is considered by some in the sport, to be the greatest of all time. Real Madrid is known for its Galácticos policy, which involves signing the world's best players, such as Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham to create a superstar team. In 2009, Madrid signed Cristiano Ronaldo for a record-breaking £80 million from Manchester United; he became the club's and history's all-time top goal-scorer. In addition to signing star players, Real Madrid develops homegrown talent through its academy, La Fábrica, which has produced notable graduates such as Raúl, Iker Casillas, and Dani Carvajal, and has supplied the highest number of players to Europe's top five leagues.
Real Madrid was recognized as the greatest football club of the 20th century, receiving the FIFA Centennial Order of Merit in 2004. Real Madrid has the highest number of participations in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League, a tournament in which they hold the records for most wins, draws and goals scored. Real Madrid is the only club to have won three consecutive titles in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League twice, achieving this in 1956-58 and 2016-18, and is the only club to win La Décima. In 2024, they won a record-extending 15th Champions League title, recognized as such by Guinness World Records. Real Madrid is the first club across all Europe's top-five leagues to win 100 trophies in all competitions. Real Madrid are ranked 1st in UEFA club rankings, and first over 2013–23 coefficient.

History

Early years (1902–1943)

Real Madrid's origins go back to when football was introduced to Madrid by the academics and students of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, which included several Cambridge and Oxford University graduates. They founded Sky Football in 1897, commonly known as La Sociedad as it was the only one based in Madrid, playing on Sunday mornings at Moncloa.
In 1900, conflict between members caused some of them to leave and create a new club, Nueva Sociedad de Football, to distinguish themselves from Sky Football. Among the dissenters were Julián Palacios, recognized as the first Real Madrid president, Juan Padrós and Carlos Padrós, the latter two being brothers and future presidents of Real Madrid. In 1901, this new club was renamed as Madrid Football Club. Later, following a restructuring in 1902, Sky was renamed as "New Foot-Ball Club".
On 6 March 1902, after a new board presided by Juan Padrós had been elected, Madrid Football Club was officially founded. The Padrós brothers summoned other football enthusiasts to a meeting in the back room of Al Capricho, the family business. They viewed football as a mass sport that should be accessible to representatives of all social classes, and thought the new club should embody that idea. The brothers proposed the name, Madrid Football Club, which was unanimously accepted. The membership fee was also set, two pesetas a month, and the color of the shirt was chosen to be white in honour of a famous English team Corinthian, which Juan Padrós had met on one of his trips.
Three years after its founding, in 1905, Madrid FC won its first title after defeating Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish Cup final. The club became one of the founding sides of the Royal Spanish Football Federation on 4 January 1909, when club president Adolfo Meléndez signed the foundation agreement of the Spanish FA. After moving between several grounds, the team relocated to the Campo de O'Donnell in 1912. In 1920, the club's name was changed to Real Madrid after King Alfonso XIII granted the title of Real to the club.
In 1929, the first Spanish football league was founded. Real Madrid led the first league season until the last match, a loss to Athletic Bilbao, meant they finished runners-up to Barcelona. Real Madrid won its first league title in the 1931–32 season and retained it the following year.
On 14 April 1931, the arrival of the Second Spanish Republic caused the club to lose the title Real and the royal crown on its emblem, going back to being named Madrid Football Club until the end of the Spanish Civil War. Football continued during the Second World War, and on 13 June 1943, Madrid beat Barcelona 11–1 in the second leg of the Copa del Generalísimo semi-finals, the Spanish Cup having been renamed in honour of General Franco.
The first leg, played at the Les Corts in Catalonia, had ended with Barcelona winning 3–0. Madrid complained about all the three goals that referee Fombona Fernández had allowed for Barcelona, with the home supporters also whistling Madrid throughout, whom they accused of employing roughhouse tactics, and Fombona for allowing them to. The newspaper Ya reported the whistling as a "clear intention to attack the representatives of Spain". Barcelona fans were banned from traveling to Madrid. The day of the second leg, the Barcelona team were insulted and stones were thrown at their bus as soon as they left their hotel.
Barcelona's striker Mariano Gonzalvo said of the incident, "Five minutes before the game had started, our penalty area was already full of coins." Barcelona goalkeeper Luis Miró rarely approached his line—when he did, he was armed with stones. As Francisco Calvet told the story, "They were shouting: Reds! Separatists!... a bottle just missed Sospedra that would have killed him if it had hit him. It was all set up."
Real Madrid went 2–0 up within half an hour. The third goal brought with it a sending off for Barcelona's Benito García after he made what Calvet claimed was a "completely normal tackle". Madrid's José Llopis Corona recalled: "At which point, they got a bit demoralized", while Ángel Mur countered, "at which point, we thought: 'go on then, score as many as you want. Madrid made it 8–0 by half-time; two goals were also ruled out for offside, and proceeded to score a further three goals in the second half, to which Barcelona replied with a late consolation goal.
According to football writer Sid Lowe, "There have been relatively few mentions of the game and it is not a result that has been particularly celebrated in Madrid. Indeed, the 11–1 occupies a far more prominent place in Barcelona's history. This was the game that first formed the identification of Madrid as the team of the dictatorship and Barcelona as its victims." Fernando Argila, Barcelona's reserve goalkeeper from the 1943 match, said: "There was no rivalry. Not, at least, until that game."

Santiago Bernabéu and unprecedented success (1943–1978)

became president of Real Madrid in 1943. Under his presidency, the club was rebuilt after the Civil War, and he oversaw the construction of the club's current stadium, Estadio Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, and its training facilities Ciudad Deportiva. Additionally, during the 1950s former Real Madrid Amateurs player Miguel Malbo founded Real Madrid's youth academy, or "cantera", known today as La Fábrica. Beginning in 1953, he embarked upon a strategy of signing world-class players from abroad, the most prominent being Alfredo Di Stéfano.
File:Training Real Madrid in Amsterdam, Amancio, Bestanddeelnr 926-3299.jpg|thumb|upright|Amancio Amaro, captain of the Yé-yé team of the 1960s
In 1955, acting upon the idea proposed by Gabriel Hanot, a French sports journalist and editor of L'Équipe, Bernabéu, Ernest Bedrignan and Gusztáv Sebes created the European Cup, a continental tournament for the league champions around Europe, which is today known as the UEFA Champions League. It was under Bernabéu's guidance that Real Madrid established itself as a major force in both Spanish and European football. The club won the European Cup five times in a row between 1956 and 1960, which included the 7–3 Hampden Park final against Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960. After these five consecutive successes, Real was permanently awarded the original cup and earned the right to wear the UEFA badge of honour. Real Madrid's achievements in Europe were built upon its unprecedented domestic dominance, with the club winning twelve league titles out of sixteen possible from 1953–54 to 1968–69, including a five-in-a-row sequence in 1961–65, and finishing runners-up a further three times.
File:Sharif El-Far 1960.jpg|thumb|Real Madrid's captain Paco Gento shaking hands with Zamalek's captain Sharif El-Far before their friendly match on the occasion for celebrating 50 years on Zamalek's establishment in Cairo Stadium on 10 March 1961
The club won the European Cup for a sixth time in 1966, defeating Partizan Belgrade 2–1 in the final with a team composed entirely of same nationality players, a first in the competition. This team became known as the Yé-yé. The name "Yé-yé" came from the "Yeah, yeah, yeah" chorus in The Beatles' song "She Loves You" after four members of the team posed for Marca and impersonated the Beatles. The Yé-yé generation was also European Cup runners-up in 1962 and 1964. In the 1970s, Real Madrid won six league championships and three Spanish Cups. The club competed in its first European Cup Winners' Cup in 1970–71 and progressed all the way to the final, where it lost to English side Chelsea 2–1 in a replay. On 2 July 1978, club president Santiago Bernabéu died while the World Cup was being played in Argentina. FIFA decreed three days of mourning to honour him during the tournament. The following year, the club organized the first edition of the Trofeo Santiago Bernabéu in memory of its former president.
Bernabéu had been Real Madrid's president for almost 35 years, during which his club won one Intercontinental Cup, six European Cups, 16 league titles, six Spanish Cups, two Latin Cups and one Copa Eva Duarte.