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Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, has traditionally worn a white home
kit since. The word Real is Spanish for royal and was bestowed to the club by
King Alfonso XIII in 1920 together with the royal crown in the emblem. The team
has played its home matches in the 85,454-capacity Santiago Bernab¨¦u Stadium in
downtown Madrid since 1947. Unlike most European football clubs, Real Madrid's
members (socios) have owned and operated the club since its inception.
The
club is the world's richest football club in terms of revenue, with an annual
turnover of €513 million, and the most valuable sports team, worth €2.4 billion
(US$3.3 billion).678 It is one of three clubs to have never been relegated from
the top flight of Spanish football, along with Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona.
Real Madrid holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably El Cl¨¢sico with FC
Barcelona and El Derbi madrileño with Atl¨¦tico Madrid.
The club established
itself as a major force in both Spanish and European football during the 1950s.
Domestically, Real Madrid has won a record 32 La Liga titles, 18 Copas del Rey,
9 Supercopas de España, 1 Copa Eva Duarte and 1 Copa de la Liga.9
Internationally it has won a record nine European Cup/UEFA Champions League
titles and a joint record three Intercontinental Cups, as well as two UEFA Cups,
and one UEFA Super Cup.
Jos¨¦ Mourinho took over as manager in May 2010.3940
In April 2011, a strange occurrence happened, for the first time ever, four
Cl¨¢sicos were to be played in a span of eighteen days. The first fixture was for
the Liga campaign on 17 April (which ended 1¨C1 with penalty goals for both
sides), the Copa del Rey final (which ended 1¨C0 to Madrid), and the
controversial two-legged Champions League semifinal on 27 April and 2 May (3¨C1
loss on aggregate) to Barcelona.
The first Clasico saw Cristiano Ronaldo get
his first goal against Barcelona due to a penalty given to Madrid after a foul
to Marcelo. The Copa del Rey final gave Real Madrid its first title under
Mourinho with a header from Cristiano Ronaldo in extra time. The Champions
League semifinal was perhaps the most controversial of the four, with the
expulsion of Pepe in the first leg at the Santiago Bernab¨¦u, after an alleged
"dangerous challenge" to Barcelona defender Daniel Alves. Alves was carried out
in a stretcher "unable to walk", but after Pepe was shown red, Alves came
running back into the field within seconds. After Pepe's sending off, coach Jos¨¦
Mourinho was also sent off, receiving a fine and a five-match ban. This same
match was also controversial in that Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets being
captured on video saying what seemed like a supposed racial slur to Madrid
left-back Marcelo. The second leg was not as controversial as the first, with
perhaps the exception of an annulled goal to Gonzalo Higua¨ªn, after Cristiano
Ronaldo was deemed to have fouled Javier Mascherano as a result of a foul to
Ronaldo by Gerard Piqu¨¦.41
In the 2011¨C12 La Liga season, Real Madrid won the
league, a record 32nd time in La Liga history and finished the season with a
number of records including 100 points in a single season, a record 121 goals
scored & goal difference of +89, and a record 16 away wins and 32 overall
wins.42 In the same season, Cristiano Ronaldo become the fastest player to reach
100 goals in Spanish league history. In reaching 101 goals in 92 games, Ronaldo
surpassed Real Madrid legend Ferenc Pusk¨¢s, who scored 100 goals in 105 games.
Ronaldo set a new club mark for individual goals scored in one year (60), and
became the first player ever to score against all 19 opposition teams in a
single season.4344
Real Madrid began the 2012-13 season by winning the
Supercopa de España, defeating Barcelona on away goals, but finished as second
in the league competition. A major transfer of the season was signing of Luka
Modrić, in the region of £33 million. In the Champions League, they were drawn
in the "group of death" along Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City and Ajax,
finishing second with ten points behind Dortmund. In the 16 round defeated
Manchester United, quarter-finals Galatasaray, and reached third straight
semifinal finish at the Champions League, where were again stopped by Dortmund.
After a disappointing extra time loss to Atl¨¦tico Madrid in the 2013 Copa del
Rey final (which broke a 14-year skid for Atleti), Florentino Perez announced
the departure of Mourinho at the end of the season by "mutual agreement".4546
Mourinho returned to the English Premier League with Chelsea, a team he managed
from 2004 to 2007.
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