Tierra Unica

2010 UEFA Champions League Final Logo!

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The 2010 UEFA Champions League Final Match on May 22, 2010 in Madrid, España - Internazionale Milano vs Bayern Munich!

F.C. Barcelona vs Real Madrid Full Highlights & Goal 11/29/09!

A summary of the biggest club rivalry in Europe, El Clasico - Futbol Club Barcelona vs Real Madrid Club de Futbol on Sunday, November 29, 2009.

Along with the huge Super Clasico rivalry between Club Atletico Boca Juniors vs Club Atletico River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Real Madrid vs Barcelona match is the greatest club rivalry in world sports.  And it is just a regularly scheduled league match, not a championship or play-off game!

Both clubs are enormously successful, especially Real Madrid, but there are a few key differentiators between the clubs:

- Real Madrid:  The establishment

- Barca: The anti-establishment

- Real Madrid: Royalty, the Spanish Crown and the Spanish Empire & all its subjects in Latin America

- Barca: Separatist  

- Real Madrid: $$$$$ MONEY $$$$$

- Barca:  Lots of $$$$$, but not as much

- Real Madrid: Corporate, big business

- Barca: By the people, for the people

- Real Madrid: Cristiano Ronaldo, world's most expensive & highest paid team athlete in sports history.

- Barca: Lionel Messi, the best player in the world today

- Real Madrid: Europe (via Portugal's C. Ronaldo)

- Barca: South America (via Argentina's Messi)

But by far the most apparent difference between the two clubs is, of course, their ideologies.  The contrast has been highlighted even more glaringly over the past year as the Camp Nou (Barca) outfit go from strength to strength and more and more prodigious young talents emerge from their cantera, while over at the Santiago Bernabeu (Real), the capital giants can barely get a single promising youth player to surface from the shadows of the superstars.   

The BBC of London, England wrote the following excerpt of the world-wide importance of this twice-a-year Spanish league (La Liga) match:

"...Forget the Barcelona 1-0 Real Madrid scoreline for just a moment - this was a game of exquisite, irresistible quality between two teams who are equally desperate to dominate the game for the next half a decade.

It was billed as the richest contest in the sport's history: Real, bolstered by the subjects of their summer spending spree, sent out a starting XI that cost £256m with a further £70m and Raul on the bench; Barca's team - with record £60m signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic among the substitutes - cost a more modest £61m, but was ably bolstered by youth products Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol and Victor Valdes.

For the first time ever they showed it in 51 cinemas across Spain, such was the appetite for this fiesta del futbol, and a global audience of one billion awaited in salivating awe. Madrid's daily sports paper AS dubbed the fixture 'Cantera contra Galacticos', as Barca's brilliant batch of homegrown stars took on the costliest team ever assembled..."

Here is the rest of the BBC Sports article.

Recap of the 1st Real vs Barca match of La Liga in the 2009 - 2010 season.

Argentina's & Barcelona's Lionel Messi, world's best player versus Spain's & Real Madrid's Raul.

 

Messi escaping from fellow Argentine National Team teammate Gago (left) and Brazilian National Team member Marcelo in the Real vs Barca match.