Real Madrid

This season’s UEFA Champions League Final will see Chelsea - Manchester United go head to head in arguably the biggest match ever played between two English clubs. Of course it’s not being played on English soil, with both teams and their fans travelling to Moscow for the 21 May showdown at Luzhniki Stadium. This will be the third occasion where two teams from the same country – England – will play the final match of the Champions League joining two other countries – Spain and Italy – that have done the same. In year 2000 it was Real Madrid and Valencia who played the final match at Saint Denis Stadium in Paris (Real Madrid win 3-0) and in year 2003 Milan and Juventus have done the same at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester (Milan win 3-2 pen). Europe’s top club competition has never featured two English sides in the Final before. But Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers did contest the UEFA Cup Final over two legs in 1972. In the early years of the competition two English sides couldn’t meet, because only the League Champions were able to enter. Manchester United entered as holder in 1968, but avoided Manchester City in the First Round draw and City were surprisingly knocked out by Fenerbahce from Turkey. In 1977 Liverpool won the ‘European Cup’, as we called it in those days, but they were League Champions too.Manchester United and Chelsea FC will fight for this year European crown and the winner will receive the competition trophy number 53.

This tournament was inaugurated in 1955 at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L’Equipe Gabriel Hanot as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Club’s Cup,  abbreviated to European Cup.

The competition began in 1955/56 using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. This qualification system continued until 1992. In the 1992/93 season, the tournament was renamed to UEFA Champions League and in 1997/98, eligibility was expanded to include not just domestic champions but also the best performing runners up according to UEFA’s coefficient ranking list. In UEFA’s coefficient system, a team finishing second in the Spanish La Liga would be more deserving of an automatic place in the Champions League than a team finishing first in, for example, Polish Orange Ekstraklasa. As a result, the system was restructured to force “weaker” national champions to qualify for the group stages, while other, “stronger” national runners-up would automatically get places.According list below, since 1955  52 clubs and 10 countries have written his name in the European Football winners. Clubs: Real Madrid (9 wins), Milan (7), Liverpool (5), Ajax and Bayern Munich (4), Barcelona, Benfica, Inter, Juventus, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Porto (2) and Aston Villa, Borussia Dortmund, Celtic Glasgow, Feyenoord, Hamburg, Olympique Marseille, PSV Eindhoven, Steaua Bucarest and Red Star Belgrade (1).  

Countries: Italy and Spain (11 times), England (10), Germany and Holland (6), Portugal (4) and France, Rumania, Scotland and Serbia (1).

After winning Racing and dreaming with a second consecutive Spanish League championship, nobody of Real Madrid players dare to pronounce the word they had in mind, “title”. Even Robinho, Robben and Sneijder put pressure on the referee in order to end the last match. Just at that moment, minute 93, Higuain scored a goal and all exploded of happiness and started to celebrate singing “¡oé, oé, oé!”.

However, despite they act and feel like champions - Real Madrid can win the Spanish League this Sunday if they win Athletic de Bilbao and FC Barcelona and Villarreal lose their matches - they tried to not talk about it with the press. “It is not done yet” stated Raúl “it is a great step but we still need some more points”, added.



Schuster, who neither pronounced the word title, “still not done, we are not there yet” didn’t talk about the possibilities of his team but he described the playstyle as “solid and safe”. There were two key points for the german coach: the defensive line and the effective attack. However, against Athletic de Bilbao, Real Madrid’s potential might not be enough. Are FC Barcelona and Villarreal going to help them?

When there is only about one month for the 2007/08 season end of the most important football European leagues the probable winners in each country have already a name or at least some teams are clear favourites to obtain the championship.Let’s have a look to the present situation of the football leagues in Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Belgium and Greece.Liga bwin in Portugal: This is the only of the above mentioned countries where there is already a winner of the major football league. Porto with 66 points is the winner when still there are four matches to be played before the end.Super League in Greece: When only one match must be played, Olympiakos with 67 points could be the winner. AEK with 65 points is second. Eredivisie in Holland: Also there is only one match to be played and PSV Eindhoven with 69 points will probably win the championship this season.Jupiter League in Belgium: Four matches to be played and Standard Liege (68 points) has 7 points advantage over Anderlecht (61 points).Premiership in England: Also four matches to be played and Manchester United (80 points) has a comfortable advantage of five points over Chelsea who is second in the table (75 points).Ligue 1 in France: Olympique Lyon with 68 points is the leader followed by Girondins Bordeaux with 64 points when there are still five matches to be played.Serie A in Italy: 4 points is the advantage of Inter (75 points) over Rome (71 points) when still five matches must be played.1 Bundesliga in Germany: 10 points is the comfortable advantage of Bayern Munich over Werder Bremen six matches before the end of the season.Primera Division in Spain: Real Madrid with 69 points is the maximum favourite to obtain the championship because second in the table is FC Barcelona with 60 points when only six matches must be played.According this up to date situation it is almost probable that following teams will go directly into the Champions League next season: Porto, Olympiakos, PSV Eindhoven, Standard Liege, Manchester United, Chelsea, Olympique Lyon, Bayern Munich, Werder Bremen, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Last week José María Gutiérrez Hernández (also known as Guti) signed a new contract of renewal with Real Madrid, the team he has played in during his whole career. The 31 year old player succeeds to extend his contract until June 30 of 2011 and it will be renewed year by year once it finishes if both Guti and Real Madrid desire this. It will be a clause of auto-renewal if he plays a minimum of 30 official matches per season. Also, his salary will be of 1.8 million euro, a bit lower than his current one (2.1 million euro) but we can’t forget that this new contract will be for life.

With this agreement, Real Madrid expand to three their number of players with a contract for life - Iker Casillas and Raul González signed their contract last February 14 - and prevent other teams to tempt them. After thirteen seasons at Real Madrid, Guti is now recognised as one of the Spanish team’s emblems as stated by Ramon Calderón. This means they are part of Real Madrid, even after they retire from playing football.

Essential or not, the truth is Guti renewed his contract and he promises to bring Real Madrid as many victories as he can while he is still an active football player. Against FC Barcelona, he has sworn to not be merciful.

When maximum only 7 or 8 Day matches must be played, let’s have a quick glance over the Major European Leagues to try to bet on which could be the future champions in the different national leagues. In Portugal, Scotland, France and Holland the final results are almost decided whilst in Germany, Italy, England and Spain the final decision must wait. To better understand the above mentioned quick information, we provide hereunder detailed situation of Major European Leagues.Portugal (Liga bwin): After Day 24 matches out of 30, Porto is first with 60 points followed by Benfica and Vitoria G both with 44 points.Scotland (Premier League): After Day 32 matches, Glasgow Rangers is first with 74 points followed by Celtic Glasgow with 68 points. France (Ligue 1): After Day 31 matches out of 38, Olympic Lyon is first with 67 points followed by Grindings Bordeaux with 58 points.Holland (Eredivisie): After Day 31 matches out of 34, PSV Eindhoven is first with 65 points followed by Ajax with 60 points.Germany (1 Bundesliga): After Day 26 matches out of 34, Bayern Munich is first with 54 points followed by Hamburg with 47 points.Italy (Serie A): After Day 31 matches out of 38, Inter is first with 69 points followed by Rome with 65 points.England (Premiership): After Day 32 matches out of 38, Manchester United is first with 76 points followed by Chelsea with 71 points.Spain (Primera Division): After Day 30 matches out of 38, Real Madrid is first with 65 points followed by Villarreal with 59 points.If we make any prediction we will only need to wait a few days to know whether we get right.

The Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid will host the 2010 UEFA Champions League final and the Arena Stadium in Hamburg will also host the 2010 UEFA Cup final. The UEFA Executive Committee confirmed the selection of the two stadiums after its meeting in Liechtenstein on Friday 28^th March but postponed a decision on the venues for the 2011 finals to allow members more time to consider the bids. The home stadiums of Real Madrid CF and Hamburger SV were chosen on the basis of capacity, facilities, accommodation and security among other considerations.Now boasting a capacity of 71,569, the Santiago Bernabeu has staged three previous European Champion Clubs’ Cup finals. Real Madrid won the first of them, beating AC Fiorentina 1-0 in 1957, before AC Milan had a memorable night in the Spanish capital when they defeated AFC Ajax 4-1 in the 1969 edition. More recently, Nottingham Forest FC overcame Hamburg 1-0 in the 1980 final.Seating 51,680, the Arena Hamburg opened in 2000 on the site of Hamburg’s old Volksparkstadion and was the setting for matches at the 2006 World Cup. The Volksparkstadion also hosted group-stage games at the 1974 World Cup and the semi-final of the 1988 UEFA European Championship, where West Germany lost 2-1 to the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the Executive Committee confirmed that the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Super Cup matches will be played at the Stadium Louis II in Monaco, as is the custom. The 2010 UEFA European Under-19 Championship was awarded to France, and the same year’s U17 event to Liechtenstein, while Nyon will stage the 2009 UEFA European Women’s U17 Championship.

According to British newspaper Daily Mirror, Rafael Benitez is expected to become the new coach of FC Barcelona if Rijkaard leaves Camp Nou at the end of the season. This newspaper also insists Johan Cruyff, president Laporta’s closet adviser, has already made a report urging the club to ignore the options of Jose Mourinho an instead pursue Benitez to replace Rijkaard, who could leave Barcelona this summer. So far, Mourinho is the candidate that vice-presidents Ferran Soriano and Marc Ingla defend.If the Spanish manager decides to leave Anfield by the end of the season to come back to Spain, he could choose between Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid or Valencia, the club that Benitez left to join Liverpool.Anyway the Liverpool coach has frequently maintained he wants to stay at Anfield for the foreseeable future and still has more than two years remaining contract. But Barça president Jan Laporta has placed Benitez at the top of his wanted list to replace Frank Rijkaard as coach because despite guiding Barça to the Champions League quarter-finals, Rijkaard’s future at the Camp Nou is under threat because is behind Real in the Liga for the second successive season. However, any move for Benitez will only take place if Laporta himself remains at Barça beyond the end of the season.While there is a perceived lack of respect in England for his achievements at Liverpool, Benitez is one of the most sought-after coaches in Europe after leading the Anfield outfit to two Champions League finals in three years.

Since 1966, Ricardo Pastor, a veteran sports journalist, predicts in detail the final position in the league table for First Division clubs in Spain. Everyone use to do the same every Sunday along the season but the merit of Ricardo Pastor is that he announces his predictions when still 10 Day matches must be played and also the most important is that in 42 years predictions he has only gone wrong 4 years and, honestly, the failures have been due to completely unusual performance of most of the clubs during the last matches of the league. One example was last season (2006/07) when FC Barcelona squandered his advantage over Real Madrid during last matches (unforeseen points looses at home in front of Betis and Espanyol among others abnormal results of both Barça and Madrid). In the predictions of Ricardo Pastor there is a lot of objective study about the performance of clubs along the season and overall doing a rigorous study and prediction for the results to be achieved during the last 10 matches. 90% success in 42 years in the variable world of football is a fantastic percentage very difficult to obtain.
His predictions for the present season, made on 20th March, are as follows: Real Madrid with 81 points will obtain the championship followed by FC Barcelona with 77 points, Villarreal with 71 points, Sevilla with 65 points (all 4 teams will obviously play next Champions League next season), Atletico Madrid with 64 points and Espanyol with 59 points (both will play for UEFA Cup). Ricardo also predicts that the three clubs that will go down to Second Division will be Valladolid with 42 points, Murcia with 37 points and Levante with 29 points.
So in eight weeks time or even less we will know the grade of success of above advanced predictions. Wait and see!

Manchester United have moved from fourth to second in the list of the world’s richest clubs and Barcelona has reached second place, as Real Madrid stayed top for the third straight year.
Deloitte’s Football Money League, which is based on revenues generated during 2006/07, was headed by United for eight years until the Spaniards deposed them.
Chelsea are fourth in Deloitte’s table, even though the Blues regularly make huge losses. Arsenal are fifth. In all, there are seven British clubs in the top 20.
Three of the four clubs that dropped out of the list were also British - Manchester City, Glasgow Rangers, and West Ham United.
And, looking ahead to next year’s report, the authors state that “2007/08 could see England providing half the Money League clubs”.
The list shows that the game’s riches continue to be monopolised by the same group of clubs, with only one change in the top 10 from the previous season.
Deloitte’s figures take into account income from ticket sales, merchandising and broadcasting contracts but do not include transfer revenues.
Between them, the collective revenue of the top 20 clubs - all European - grew by 11% to £2.5bn in 2006/07, the highest rate of growth since 2002/03.
The 5 first places of that League are ( in millions of £): Real Madrid 236.2, Manchester United 212.1, Barcelona 195.3, Chelsea 190.5 and Arsenal 177.6.