On Saturday December 3, Spanish football giants Barcelona and Real Madrid played out a pulsating 1-1 draw in the Nou Camp, as the Barcelona home ground is called.
It was the latest edition of El Clasico, the term the Spanish press has dubbed any football match between these two bitter rivals.
Real Madrid and Barcelona are not just two of the best teams in the world; they are also two of the richest and most successful. Between them, they have won a total of 175 trophies. While Barca has won 91, Real has 84.
But Real will always remind anyone that they have won the trophies that matter more times than their Catalan rivals. Real have won the UEFA Champions League a record 11 times and have been La Liga champions 32 times. Barcelona have five Champions League trophies and 24 La Liga victories.
It is only normal that both sides do their utmost to outdo each other on and off the field. To maintain their high profile status, both clubs move stones to sign the world’s best players. When Lionel Messi rose through Barca’s famed La Masia football academy to become the best player in the world, Madrid fought back by buying Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United for a then world record fee of $132 million.
The two are the two best players of this generation and they have broken all sorts of individual records. They have dominated the FIFA World Player of the Year/Ballon d’Or award for the past eight years, with Messi winning the prize a record five times.
Both teams also boast of a great supporting act. Madrid has Welsh talisman Gareth Bale while Barca parades Brazilian wonder boy Neymar.
However, their intense competition transcends the football field. It includes rivalries in sponsorship, finances and even politics. The two teams are based in two of the largest cities in Spain. They also have opposing political positions. While Madrid stands for Spanish nationalism, Barcelona represents Catalan nationalism.
Real’s shirt is manufactured by Adidas while Barcelona are clients of American giants Nike. Adidas and Nike are the world’s top two sportswear manufacturers and of course are not the best of friends. When Adidas goes one way, Nike has to go the other. And both have been jostling to outdo the other.
German sportswear manufacturers Adidas, which has supplied Real’s kit since 1998, renewed their contract in January 2016. The new mouthwatering deal, worth £106 million a year over 10 years, was the biggest in history when it was signed.
However, a few months later, in May 2016, Barcelona agreed a mammoth long-term £120 million-a-season contract extension with Nike to surpass Real Madrid’s contract. The kit deal, the most expensive in history, will run until 2026.
Nike also has the upper hand in individual sponsorships. According to Marca, Spain’s leading sports newspaper, of the 46 players from both teams, Nike sponsors 25 players while Adidas has 19. Only two are sponsored by other brands. Ironically, Ronaldo of Real Madrid and Barcelona’s Messi switched roles. Nike sponsors Ronaldo while Messi belongs to Adidas.
The two football teams are also slugging it out in the area of shirt sponsorship. Real Madrid, currently the world’s most valuable football team with a value of $3.64 billion, is sponsored by Emirates, the largest airline in the Middle East with headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. To get its “Fly Emirates” logo on Real Madrid’s playing and training kits, the Dubai based airline cough out $39 million every year.
Not to be undone, Barcelona, the second most valuable football team with a worth of $3.54 billion, signed a three-year corporate sponsorship deal with Emirates’ Middle East rival, Qatar Airways in 2013. The deal, worth $45 million annually, is the first time that a corporation – rather than a non-profit charitable organization – would feature as a sponsor of the iconic Barcelona shirt in the club’s 113-year history.
The rivalry between these two huge clubs is so intense that it is sacrilege for a player to leave one club and sign for the other. The few who have succeeded in moving – such as Luis Figo – have been branded eternal traitors by the club they left.
So is there a chance of Messi or Ronaldo switching sides in future? That, to say the least, is impossible.
Picture: www.mirror.co.uk
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