Real Madrid

 Real Madrid, is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. It was founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club and has traditionally worn a white home kit since. The word Real is Spanish for royal and was bestowed to the club by King Alfonso XIII in 1920 together with the royal crown in the emblem. The club established itself as a major force in both Spanish and European football during the 1950s. Unlike most European football clubs, Real Madrid's members have owned and operated the club since its inception. The club is the richest football club in terms of annual revenue, generating €479.5million in 2011 and the second most valuable, worth €1.8billion. Real Madrid holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably El Clásico with FC Barcelona. The team has played its home matches in the 85,454-capacity Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid since 1947. It is one of three clubs to have never been relegated from the top flight of Spanish football, along with Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona. Domestically, Real Madrid has won a record 32 La Liga titles, 18 Copas del Rey, 9 Supercopas de España, 1 Copa Eva Duarte and 1 Copa de la Liga.Internationally it has won a record nine European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles and a joint record three Intercontinental Cups, as well as two UEFA Cups, and one UEFA Super Cup.






History



  Early years (1897–1945)
Real Madrid's origins go back to when football was introduced to Madrid by the academics and students of the Institución libre de enseñanza, which included several Cambridge and Oxford University graduates. They founded Football Club Sky in 1897, playing on Sunday mornings at Moncloa. It split into two clubs in 1900: New Foot-Ball de Madrid and Club Español de Madrid. On 6 March 1902, after a new Board presided by Juan Padrós had been elected, Madrid Football Club was officially founded. Three years after its foundation, in 1905, Madrid FC won its first title after defeating Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish Cup final. The club became one of the founding sides of the Royal Spanish Football Federation on 4 January 1909, when club president Adolfo Meléndez signed the foundation agreement of the Spanish FA. After moving between grounds the team moved 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. In 1929, the first Spanish football league was founded. Real Madrid led the first league season until the last match, a loss to Athletic Bilbao, meant they finished runners-up to Barcelona. Real Madrid won its first League title in the 1931–32 season. Real won the League again the following year, becoming the first side to have won the championship twice. On 14 April 1931, the arrival of the Second Spanish Republic caused the club to lose the title Real and went back to being named as Madrid Football Club. Football continued during the Second World War, and on 13 June 1943 Madrid beat Barcelona 11–1 in the second leg of a semi-final of the Copa del Generalísimo, the Copa del Rey having been renamed in honour of General Franco. It has been suggested that players were intimidated by police,including by the director of state security who "allegedly told the team that some of them were only playing because of the regime's generosity in permitting them to remain in the country.The Barcelona chairman, Enric Piñeyro, was assaulted by Madrid fans.

Euro 2012 The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, is the 14th European Championship for national football teams organised by UEFA. The final tournament is being hosted by Poland and Ukraine between 8 June and 1 July 2012. It is the first time that either nation has hosted the tournament. This bid was chosen by UEFA's Executive Committee in 2007. The final tournament features 16 nations, the last European Championship to do so (from Euro 2016 onward, there will be 24 finalists). Qualification was contested by 51 nations between August 2010 and November 2011 to join the two host nations in the tournament. The winner of the tournament gains automatic entry to the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup hosted by Brazil. The tournament is played across eight venues, four in each host country, five of which were newly built for the tournament. Aside from venues, the host nations have also invested heavily in improving infrastructure, such as railways and roads, at UEFA's request. Euro 2012 was the second consecutive European Championship (after UEFA Euro 2008 held in Austria and Switzerland) to see none of the hosts emerge from the group stage after co-hosts Poland and Ukraine failed to qualify for the quarter-finals.

The draw for the UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying competition took place in Warsaw on 7 February 2010. Fifty-one teams entered to compete for the fourteen remaining places in the finals, alongside co-hosts Poland and Ukraine. The teams were divided into nine groups, with the draw using the new UEFA national team coefficient for the first time in order to determine the seedings. As defending champions, Spain was automatically top seeded. The qualifying process began in August 2010 and concluded in November 2011. At the conclusion of the qualifying group stage in October 2011, the nine group winners qualified automatically, along with the highest ranked second placed team. The remaining eight second placed teams contested two-legged play-offs, and the four winners qualified for the finals. Twelve of the sixteen finalists participated at the previous tournament in 2008. England and Denmark made their return to the Euro, having last participated in 2004, while Republic of Ireland returned after a twenty-four year absence to make their second appearance at a European Championship. One of the co-hosts, Ukraine, made their debut as an independent nation (before 1992 Ukraine participated as part of the Soviet Union). With the exception of Serbia – according to UEFA's ranking at the end of the qualifying stage – Europe's sixteen highest-ranked teams all successfully qualified for the tournament. Eight cities were selected by UEFA as host venues. In a return to the format used at Euro 1992, Euro 1996 and Euro 2008, each of the four groups' matches were played in two stadiums. Host cities Warsaw, Gdańsk, Wrocław, Poznań, Kiev, and Lviv are all popular tourist destinations, unlike Donetsk and Kharkiv, the latter of which replaced Dnipropetrovsk as a host city in 2009. In order to meet UEFA's requirement for football infrastructure improvements, five new stadiums were built and opened in advance of the tournament. The remaining three stadiums (in Kiev, Poznań and Kharkiv) underwent major renovations in order to meet UEFA's infrastructure standards. Three of the stadiums are categorized as UEFA's highest category stadiums. The transport infrastructure in Poland and Ukraine was also extensively modified on the request of UEFA to cope with the large influx of football fans. UEFA organized fan zones in the eight host cities. They were located in the center of each city, with all 31 matches shown live on a total of 24 giant screens. The zones enabled supporters to come together in a secure and controlled environment. The Warsaw Fan Zone occupied 120,000 square meters and accommodated 100,000 visitors. In all, the fans zones had a 20% increase in capacity compared to Euro 2008. The tournament was broadcast live by around 100 TV channels covering the whole world. 150,000,000 people were expected to watch the matches each day. Each team has a "team base camp" for its stay between the matches. From an initial list of thirty-eight potential locations (twenty-one in Poland, seventeen in Ukraine), the national associations chose their locations in 2011. The teams will both train and reside in these locations throughout the tournament, traveling to games staged away from their bases.