The World’s Greatest Clubs

From time to time throughout the season (unless we get distracted by a pretty girl or something) we’ll be highlighting some of the world’s greatest football clubs. In no particular order, we’ll start with perhaps the game’s most accomplished club of all…

Real Madrid

- Founded in 1902. They are one of the founding members of soccer’s governing body – the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA).

- Most successful club in the history of Spanish Football and FIFA has voted them the most successful of the entire 20th century!

- The world’s richest club, Real Madrid has about 400 million Euros in annual revenue.

- Winner of 31 Spanish League Championships.

- winner of 9 UEFA Champions League titles (between the best club teams in all of Europe). No team has won as many. They have reached the semi-finals of the tournament a stunning 21 times.

- Winner of 3 Intercontinental Cups (between the winner of the European and South American Club Championships.)

- The “Real” in their name means Royal, and is a designation given to them by the King of Spain in 1920, hence the crown in their team emblem.

- Though Atletico Madrid is their crosstown enemy, their real rival (for titles and hearts) is Barcelona. Some of the greatest football in recent history has been played in the match between them called “el Clasico”.

- Real play their home matches in the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium (named after a former president of the club who was responsible for it’s creation). It was built in 1947 and rebuilt after the Spanish Civil War. The stadium has a capacity of about 80,000.

- The list of great players to don the Real Madrid jersey is too lengthy to print here, but it includes Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Emilio Butragueno, Hugo Sanchez, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Santillana and recently both Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Kaka.

- The list of big name Real managers is also long. Fabio Capello, Miguel Munoz, Vicente Del Bosque, Guus Hiddink, Carlos Queiroz are just a few of football’s household names who have coached them.

- As usual, their roster this year includes a bevy of superstars like Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, Carvalho, Diarra, Xabi Alonso, and more. Their World Class goalkeeper, Iker Casillas is back and the team look strong on paper. Lately though, their star studded lineups have had to bow down to the superior technicality and consistency of the likes of Leo Messi and Xavi of Barcelona. Will this be the year that Real manages to get the most out of their superstars? Stay tuned…

Enjoy the games!
Jerrito