Saturday, May 19, 2007

Real Madrid

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid. It is the football club with most European honors in the world and holds several records. The club also has a similarly successful basketball section. The original uniform colors, white t-shirt and shorts, and blue socks were inspired in the London Corinthians, and the purple band in the badge represents the kingdom of Castile.
The club was one of the founding members of FIFA.They play their home games at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. Real Madrid have been European Champions a record 9 times and have also won 29 La Liga titles. Real Madrid is unusual in that, unlike most football clubs, it has been owned and operated only by its members (socios) since 1902. On December 23, 2000, FIFA awarded Real Madrid as the Best Club of the twentieth Century.
During its history, the club has acquired a lot of nicknames. The first ones were los merengues, because of the white dessert meringue, and los blancos. Both simply referred to the club's legendary all-white strip and are the most common until this day. In the 1970s, the nickname los vikingos became popular, due to the signings of several northern European players. More recently, the media called the club los galácticos, referring to club's tendency to sign the most famous players in the world.

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