REAL Definition & Meaning

Real Madrid became the first football club to generate over €1 billion in revenue in the 2023–24 season, according to the Deloitte Football Money League 2025. Along with Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna, Real Madrid is organised as a registered association. The president cannot invest his own money, and the club can only spend what it earns, which is mainly derived through sponsorships, commercial partnerships, merchandise sales, television rights, prize money and ticket sales. Unlike a limited company, it is not possible to purchase shares in the club, but only a membership. The members of Real Madrid, called “socios”, form an assembly of delegates which is the highest governing body of the club. At the end of the 2009–10 season, the club’s board of directors stated that Real Madrid had a net debt of €244.6 million, €82.1 million lower than the previous fiscal year.

Records and statistics

At the quarter-final stage in 1995–96, Juventus prevailed 2–1 over the two legs and went on to lift the trophy. In the 1998 UEFA Champions League Final between the teams in Amsterdam, Real Madrid won 1–0. They met again in the 2002–03 UEFA Champions League semi-finals, when both clubs were in their respective ‘golden eras’; Juventus won 4–3 on aggregate. By that time, star midfielder Zinedine Zidane, who played for the Bianconeri in the 1998 final, had moved from Turin to Madrid in a world record €77 million deal. On 9 May 2006, the Alfredo Di Stéfano Stadium, named after club legend Alfredo Di Stéfano, was inaugurated in the Real Madrid City, where Real Madrid usually trains.

• 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.
• Following his election in 1943, president Santiago Bernabéu decided that the Chamartín was not big enough for the ambitions of the club, and thus a new stadium was built and inaugurated on 14 December 1947.
• Atlético’s supporters accepted the new “Indian” nickname joyfully and have been using it until today.
• 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 teams met again in the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League group stage, with Madrid winning 2–1 at home and drawing 2–2 away en route to their tenth title.

On 12 January 2020, Madrid beat cross-city rivals Atlético Madrid in a penalty shootout in the Supercopa de España final to win their eleventh title. After a three-month hiatus due to the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, La Liga was restarted in June and Madrid won ten games in a row to capture the team’s 34th league title, collecting 87 points in total. From the competition’s resumption in June and until the end of the 2020–21 season, Real temporarily played home fixtures at the Alfredo Di Stéfano Stadium, while the Santiago Bernabéu underwent extensive renovations.

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 (Royal) to the 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 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.

Current squad

In addition, profit from the sale was spent on a state-of-the-art training complex on the city’s outskirts. Another match that is often played in the European Cup/Champions League is Real Madrid vs Juventus, the most decorated Italian club. They have played each other in 21 matches and have an almost perfectly balanced record (nine wins for Juventus, ten wins for Real Madrid and two draws), as well as nearly the same goal difference (Madrid ahead 26 to 25). Athletic Bilbao, who operate a policy of only using local players, have long since ceased to be a competitive rival to clubs such as Real Madrid who scour the globe for the best talent; the Lions won only two of the 26 matches between the teams from 2005–06 to 2016–17.

Second Florentino Pérez era (2009–present)

On 23 November 1947, in a game against Atlético Madrid at the Metropolitano Stadium, Real Madrid became the first Spanish team to wear numbered shirts. English club Leeds United permanently switched their blue shirt for a white one in the 1960s, to emulate the dominant Real Madrid of the era. In the summer of 2019, Madrid signed Eden Hazard, Luka Jović, Éder Militão, Ferland Mendy, Rodrygo, Reinier and other players for a total of more than €350 million.

Games & Quizzes

For the last season of the century, 1999–2000, the squad was still led by the older veterans such as Fernando Hierro, Fernando Redondo, Roberto Carlos and Raúl. Real added the budding young talents of Guti and Iker Casillas, supported by the arrival of Steve McManaman and Nicolas Anelka from the English Premier League, alongside local talents Míchel Salgado and Iván Helguera. In Del Bosque’s first season in charge, Real won the Champions League for the eighth time, following a 3–0 victory over Valencia in the final, with goals from Morientes, McManaman and Raúl. In the early 1980s, Real Madrid had lost its grasp on the La Liga title, until a new cohort of home-grown stars brought domestic success back to the club. Spanish sports journalist Julio César Iglesias gave to this generation the name La Quinta del Buitre (“Vulture’s Cohort”), which was derived from the nickname given to one of its members, Emilio Butragueño.

• Among the club’s on-field records is a 22-game winning streak in all competitions during the 2014–15 season, a Spanish record.
• Barcelona sold Madrid their half-share, and Di Stéfano moved to Los Blancos, signing a four-year contract.
• 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.
• In the 1998 UEFA Champions League Final between the teams in Amsterdam, Real Madrid won 1–0.

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol

Initially knows as Nuevo Chamartín, the stadium was renamed in honour of Bernabéu in 1955 and continues to bear his name to this day. The first match at the Bernabéu was played between Madrid and the Portuguese club Belenenses, with Los Blancos winning 3–1 and Sabino Barinaga scoring the first goal. Since the advent of the replica kit market, the club has also released various other one colour designs, including red, green, orange and black. Real Madrid’s first shirt sponsor, Zanussi, agreed for the 1982–83, 1983–84 and 1984–85 seasons. Following that, the club was sponsored by Parmalat and Otaysa before a long-term deal was signed with Teka in 1992.

The team was instrumental in ending Barcelona’s dominance, despite the Blaugrana boasting arguably the greatest collection of talent in history, and overshadowed the Catalans on the chicken road app European stage. Real Madrid was also somewhat notoriously unlucky in its league campaigns throughout these nine years, finishing runners-up with 96, 92 (twice) and 90 points, as well as on 87 points in third place, just three off the league winners. After a slow start to the 2014–15 season, Real Madrid went on a record-breaking 22-match winning streak, which included wins against Barcelona and Liverpool, surpassing the previous Spanish record of 18 successive wins set by Frank Rijkaard’s Barça in the 2005–06 season. In late December, Real Madrid won their first Club World Cup, defeating San Lorenzo 2–0 in the final.

La Décima and Champions League dominance

According to Deloitte, Real Madrid had a recorded revenue of €401 million in the same period, ranking first. Cristiano Ronaldo scored three goals over the two matches including the decisive penalty and a spectacular overhead kick, and having won the Champions League with Madrid for a fourth time, he transferred to Juventus a few months later for a €117 million fee. The rivalry was intensified during the 1950s when the clubs disputed the signing of Alfredo Di Stéfano. Di Stéfano had impressed both Barcelona and Real Madrid while playing for Los Millonarios in Bogotá, Colombia, during a players’ strike in his native Argentina. Soon after Millonarios’ return to Colombia, Barcelona directors visited Buenos Aires and agreed with River Plate, the last FIFA-affiliated team to have held Di Stéfano’s rights, for his transfer in 1954 for the equivalent of 150 million Italian lira (according to other sources 200,000 dollars). FIFA appointed Armando Muñoz Calero, former president of the Spanish Football Federation as mediator.

Word History

Real Madrid has maintained the white shirt for its home kit throughout the history of the club. It was an initiative undertaken by Juan Padrós in honour of an English team Corinthian, which he had met on one of his trips, one of the most famous teams at the time known for its elegance and sportsmanship. It was decided that Real Madrid would wear black shorts in an attempt to replicate the English team, which had also inspired Madrid’s original white kit, but the initiative lasted just one year.

At that time, King Alfonso XIII granted the club his royal patronage which came in the form of the title “Real Madrid”, meaning “Royal”. Thus, Alfonso’s crown was added to the crest and the club styled itself Real Madrid Club de Fútbol. Following the conclusion of the 2023–24 season, Real Madrid announced that striker Kylian Mbappé would be joining the club on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain in July 2024, concluding one of the most highly anticipated transfer sagas in modern history. On 18 December 2024, Real Madrid clinched their second trophy of the season, uplifting the inaugural 2024 FIFA Intercontinental Cup by beating Pachuca 3–0.

Únete a la Comunidad Madridista

Real finished runners-up to Barça in La Liga, accumulating 85 points, and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League for the third year in a row, where they were eliminated by Borussia Dortmund 3–4 on aggregate. A major transfer of the season was the signing of Luka Modrić from Tottenham Hotspur for a fee in the region of £33 million. After a loss to Atlético in the Copa del Rey final, Pérez announced the departure of José Mourinho at the end of the season by “mutual agreement”. On 1 June 2009, Florentino Pérez regained Real Madrid’s presidency amid the outrage over the club’s decline. Pérez continued with the Galácticos policy pursued in his first term, buying Kaká from Milan for a record-breaking (in pounds sterling) sum of £56 million, and then breaking the record again by purchasing Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United for £80 million.

Meanwhile, Vinícius Júnior was given the number #7 jersey, previously used by Raúl and Cristiano Ronaldo; while Rodrygo was given the number #11 jersey, previously used by Gareth Bale. Karim Benzema left the club, while Toni Kroos would later announce that he would retire from football after the season. 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”.