Real Madrid

Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid. It is the most sucessful club of the 20th century and also the football club with most European honors 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.^[1] 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. The club also operates a reserve football team, Real Madrid Castilla, and a successful basketball team, Real Madrid Baloncesto and are trying to sponsor a rugby team, CRC Madrid Noroeste and a Formula One team. 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.