The place of memories - Real Madrid 1996

July 15, 2021

Club history

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, better known simply as Real Madrid, is a sports entity based in Madrid, Spain. It was declared officially registered as a football club by its members on March 6, 1902 for the purpose of practicing and developing this sport —although its origins date back to the year 1900, and its name (Society) Madrid Football Club to November 1901—being the fifth club founded in the capital. It had Julián Palacios and the brothers Juan Padrós and Carlos Padrós as the main supporters of its creation.

Identified by its white color —from which it receives the nickname "whites" or "merengues"—, it is one of the four professional soccer clubs in the country whose legal entity is not that of a sports limited company (SAD), n. 4 since its ownership rests with its more than 100,000 members. Another caveat is shared with Athletic Club and Fútbol Club Barcelona by participating without interruption in the highest category of the National Professional Soccer League, the First Division of Spain, since its establishment in 1929. In it he has the honors of having been the first historical leader of the competition,13 the club with the most titles, and the one with the highest score in a single edition.

Devoted from the beginning to the development of football, it soon acquired a multi-sport character and developed several other disciplines that disappeared over the years, with the exception of the basketball section, called Real Madrid Basketball. There were various speculations in recent history. of the entity about the possibility of recovering some of them, such as the handball section, or the rugby section that did not materialize, n. 8 Unlike a women's soccer section, a plot that since 2010 the club has been working to create with a base from the training cycle to the highest category. Finally in 2019, and taking another of the possible paths for its creation, the merger by absorption of Club Deportivo TACÓN took place, being approved in an extraordinary meeting by the compromising members and thus forming the Real Madrid Women's Soccer Club.

He is a creative, founding and co-founding member of several of the longest-running Spanish competitions before the existence of the relevant governing bodies: the Central Regional Championship , or the Spanish Cup. Internationally he was one of the founding members of FIFA, estate that awarded him the Order of Merit for his special relevance in football after collaborating in the birth of some of the most prestigious competitions or associations such as the European Cup, the Intercontinental Cup, or the Association of European Clubs.

In terms of sporting achievements, it is one of the most successful and recognized entities in the world in both disciplines, and has been awarded nationally and internationally by FIFA as the Best Club of the 20th century, as the Best European and World Club. of the 20th century by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS), and as the Best Club of the 21st century by Globe Soccer. Between both disciplines, it has a total of eleven world championships and twenty-three European Cups, more than any other European club in both sports as a whole, ranking sixth in the multi-sports record if sections that the club does not have are taken into account.

Thirteen former members of the club were included in the FIFA Hall of Fame, a project dedicated to preserving the memory of important figures in football history. They include Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás, Zinedine Zidane, Hugo Sánchez, Ricardo Zamora, Emilio Butragueño, Vicente del Bosque, Luís Figo, Ronaldo Nazário, Jorge Valdano and Waldir Pereira Didí, joined by Santiago Bernabéu and Paco Gento. as "deans", or of special importance. The club, as an entity, was also included among the soccer fans surveyed as of 2018 in Spain by the Statista market statistics and opinion portal, indicating it as the most popular club, while which at an international level is also one of the most recognized entities in the world with an estimated 500 million followers in 2020. The number of supporters, with close to 20 million monthly visits on Google, makes it one of the sports associations with the highest value in the market and one of the ones that obtains the most profits annually. It has a non-profit foundation dedicated to international cooperation social work in favor of development around the world.

The historic moment of the t-shirt

Twenty years ago, Real Madrid beat Juventus 1-0 to win their seventh European Cup. "Where is Del Piero?", commented the white fans. "Iron has eaten it!"