Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (also known as Real Madrid, Los Blancos, Los Merengues) is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club is the most successful club in Spanish football and was voted by FIFA as the most successful football club of the 20th century, having won a record thirty-one La Liga titles, seventeen Spanish Cups, a record nine European Cups and two UEFA Cups. Up until 1992, the European football's premier club competition was the European Champion Clubs' Cup; since then, it has been the UEFA Champions League. Real was a founding member of The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the now-defunct G-14 group of Europe's leading football clubs as well as its replacement, the European Club Association.

Founded in 1902, Real Madrid has since spent all of its history in the top flight of Spanish football. In the 1940s, the club, the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and the Ciudad Deportiva were rebuilt following the Spanish Civil War. During the 1950s, Real Madrid established itself as a major force in both Spanish and European football. During the second half of the 1980s, the club had one of the best teams in Spain and Europe (known as La Quinta del Buitre), winning two UEFA Cups, five Spanish championships in a row, one Spanish cup and three Spanish Super Cups.

The club's traditional kit colours are all white. It plays its home professional games in the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in downtown Madrid since 1947. Unlike most European football clubs, the club members (socios) have owned and operated Real Madrid since its foundation.

Real Madrid maintains a large fanbase and holds numerous long-standing rivalries with several other clubs, the most notable with FC Barcelona with whom they biannually contest the El Clásico. The club is the world's richest in football (€351m) in terms of revenue and the second most valuable (worth over €950m as of 2008).

History

In 1929, the first Spanish football league was founded. Real Madrid had the lead going into the last match of the season, but a loss to Athletic Bilbao at San Mamés kept Madrid from winning the title. They had to settle for runner-up, just one point behind Barcelona. Real Madrid won its first League title in the 1931–32 season. The Whites won the League again the following year, and thus became the first side to have won the championship twice.

Santiago Bernabéu Yeste became President of Real Madrid in 1945. Under his presidency, the club, the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and the Ciudad Deportiva were rebuilt following the Spanish Civil War. Beginning in 1953, he embarked upon a strategy of signing world-class players from abroad, the most prominent of them being the signing of Alfredo di Stéfano. Thus, he built the world's first multinational side.