El Clasico: A brief history of the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry

On Oct. 28, Real Madrid and Barcelona meet for the 177th time in La Liga and the 272nd time overall. Here’s a brief history of El Clasico.

As one of the most well-followed rivalries in any sport across the globe, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid lives up to the classic billing on a regular basis. But in the grand scheme of global rivalries, El Clasico is a relatively recent construction.

Barcelona, founded in 1899 in the capital city of Catalonia, came into existence three years before Real Madrid. On May 6, 1902, Madrid Football Club was formed in the national capital. Since then, the clubs have met 272 times leading up to Sunday’s clash at Camp Nou in Barcelona.

As we look ahead to the latest installment of El Clasico, it’s worth taking a few minutes to look back at the evolution of this rivalry. Here’s a short breakdown of the history of the two clubs .

1902-1936: Barcelona dominate El Clasico until La Liga forms

Just seven days after Madrid were founded, the first meeting between Barca and the club that would become Real took place. The clubs met in the Copa de la Coronacion, a four-team tournament in honor of the rise to power of Alfonso XIII that served as an unofficial forbear to the Copa del Rey, founded a year later.

Madrid lost 3-1 in the semifinals of the tournament to the Catalans. Over the next 15 years, Madrid went winless in their first nine matches against Barca. It wasn’t until the 1916 Copa del Rey, when Madrid won 4-1 in the second leg of the semifinals, that they finally defeated the Blaugrana for the first time. In the replay, Barcelona drew 6-6 and then lost 4-2 as Madrid went unbeaten in three in a row.

The good times wouldn’t last. Barcelona went undefeated in 13 straight matches between 1917 and 1927 prior to the formation of the national league in 1929. During this period of Catalan dominance, Madrid would become Real Madrid after receiving the royal designation from Alfonso XIII in 1920.

That designation meant little when it came to beating Barcelona over the first decade that Madrid lived as Real. By the time La Liga first came into existence in 1929, though, Real were ready to step up and overtake their provincial rivals.

Over the early years of league play leading up to the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona suddenly had few answers for Real. The Catalan side notched only three wins against five draws and 11 losses between 1929 and 1936, all but three of the matches happening in the new league, when war broke out and La Liga was suspended.

1939-1975: The evolving politics of El Clasico in the Franco years

Once Franco consolidated power over Spain, fortunes continued to turn in favor of Real Madrid. Things first came to a head in El Clasico when the two rivals met in 1943 in the semifinals of the Copa del Generalissimo, rebranded from the Copa del Rey after Franco’s rise. The contentious battle to reach the final of the cup competition remains a source of enmity between the two clubs three-quarters of a century later.

After losing 3-0 in Barcelona, Real Madrid turned around and routed their rivals in the second leg of the semifinals, winning 11-1 in the capital. The atmosphere was charged, as fans rained down projectiles on the Barcelona players. Madrid went up quickly, with the crowd and the officiating all going in their favor, and by halftime they were up 8-0.

This was the match that sparked the rivalry in earnest. As backup Barcelona goalkeeper Fernando Argila said about the match, “There was no rivalry. Not, at least, until that game.”

The enmity grew further in the 1950s when Real Madrid poached Alfredo di Stefano from Barcelona after the Argentinian star originally signed to play in Catalonia. Enjoying proximity and favor from the Franco regime, Real Madrid grew in this period into an international juggernaut.

Winners of the first five European Cups between 1956 and 1960, Real took down Barcelona on the way to their fifth European crown. The two clubs met again in 1961, as Barcelona became the first club to knock Real Madrid out of the annual tournament.

Beyond the pitch, the Castilian government in Madrid suppressed regional identities during the Franco era. For Catalonia, Barcelona became the semiotic stand-in for other symbols of regional pride. This was already the case before Franco even took power in the 1930s, but it ramped up once Catalan symbols were banned by the central government.

It was during the tail end of the Franco era in 1968 that Narcis de Carreras, the 32nd president of Barcelona, voiced the words that would become the club’s rallying cry and slogan: “Mes que un club.” Barcelona’s colors and crest became interchangeable symbols of Catalan pride and identity, at the same time that the rivalry escalated further.

1976-present: El Clasico evolves into an international sensation

Once Franco was out of the picture, Barcelona were freed to fully embrace its international appeal. The process actually began a few years before Franco’s death in 1975, when Johan Cruyff transferred from Ajax to Barcelona. The Blaugrana eventually came to play a modified version of the Total Football that had launched the Netherlands to the forefront of tactical evolution in the 1970s.

Cruyff, first as a player and later as a manager at Barcelona between 1988 and 1996, helped usher in the era of tiki-taka that turned Barça into a possession machine. Real Madrid, during this period, found themselves falling behind until a new homegrown cohort that came to be known as La Quinta del Buitre emerged from the youth academy. That group restored Real to the top of the league in 1986 and went on to win five straight domestic titles.

Barcelona took over the top of the table in 1991 and went on to win their first Champions League title in 1992. Real Madrid followed suit as they won three European titles in 1998, 2000 and 2002.

In the midst of Real’s return to the pinnacle of European soccer, Luis Figo shifted sides from Barcelona to Madrid in a reprisal of the Alfredo di Stefano incident nearly a half-century earlier. Figo, thanks to a bet with Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, switched loyalties. In the process, he became a pariah in Catalonia and a savior in the capital.

The 21st century has seen both clubs rise to the top of the sport. Real Madrid and Barcelona have grown in recent decades into two of the three richest clubs in the world, with each generating more than $750 million in revenue annually.

Since the turn of the century, the two Spanish giants have won nine of the 17 Champions League titles. They’ve also soaked up all but three La Liga titles since 2001 as the duopoly sinks its hooks deeper into the coffers of Spanish soccer.

As two of the dominant sides in Europe, Real and Barcelona have become destinations for the world’s greatest players. Since Figo’s transfer between the two El Clasico rivals in 2000, five of the past six latest world-record transfer fees in the new century have involved players either moving to or from a Spanish club.

There was nothing that guaranteed El Clasico would turn into the biggest rivalry game in the world. Most rivalries in soccer around the globe are predicated on proximity; Barcelona and Madrid are more than 300 miles apart as the crow flies. But they’ve both been good regularly, and at the same time, and that certainly helps build bad blood between two teams.

The combination of a long history of competition against one another, the politics that inevitably come to shape the evolution of particular clubs and fanbases and the fact that the two clubs have historically been perennial contenders have all played a role in developing the rivalry we now know as El Clasico. Keep that in mind when you see the two teams square away in the next edition of a legendary duel.