Not sure if serious? 33 fencing titles? Chess? If we include such sports and individual sports as a whole Barça remains the sports club with the most European titles and the most titles that are the equivalent of the CL.
Take our athletics sections with several active Olympic champions and the amateur sports. Barça has 1 Club World Cup in beach soccer (equivalent of the CL in this sport) on top of my head.
Overall, with all due respect, CSKA is not in the same stratosphere as Barça.
Yes, Barça is unique by being the most successful sports club in Europe if all sports are combined. I would claim that it is a quite unique achievement to have won the equivalent of the CL in all of your professional sports sections. Whatever your local village club is, I doubt that they can compare in this regard. No club in Europe can. This is a factual statement, not just opinion.
No offense but you can’t be from Spain or a Spaniard when writing such an ignorant post. Hence your iimited knowledge of the topics at hand and lack of access to primary literature in Spanish. What you wrote is pure nonsense.
The di Stéfano case has been widely covered and it has been proven beyond any doubt that foul play did occur and that he was literally stolen from the nose of Barça who signed him first. In fact Di Stéfano played his first matches in Spain in a Barça shirt. There are photos and footage of this. Nor did Barça ever agree to him leaving for RM.
RM has always been the state-supported/sponsored club and always enjoyed favorable referring decisions (incomparable to those of Barça) and most of the media control to create narratives and put pressure on referees and the local football discourse. We see this to this very day. I talked about the joke that is El Chiringuito de Jugones and that it might as well be called Real Madrid Televisión. It has always been that way.
RM will always be closely associated with the Franco regime as will Santiago Bernabeú (a well-known and public fascist bigot whose open anti-Catalan sentiments are well-known and widely covered). Franco was not interested in football to begin with but the Franco regime clearly used RM as a vehicle for international exposure for the country and as such favored it and looked the other way whenever there were any "obstacles". It did not hurt that RM were seen as a “pure” Spanish team and not located in the many historically autonomous communities (Catalan, Basque, Galician etc.).
Not much different from the time of Sanz when the club was close to bankruptcy but suddenly under Florentino managed to sell land for an inflated price and under dubious circumstances and the whole Figo transfer (bank guarantee at a time of great economic crisis - no levers!). Basically nothing will change the fact that RM has been and remains the club of the establishment to this very day. The same Florentino controls much of the sports media in the country. Ever wondered why there are hardly ever any leaks coming out from RM (other than the famous Florentino tapes during the Covid-19 crisis which were 20-10 years old) while this constantly occurs for Barça? Gerard Romero said it very well this summer, in BCN the local journalists report what they want to, in Madrid most of the journalists are in the pockets of Florentino and only report what he tells them to report.
You guys literally won 2 CL finals (and God's know how many European Cup/CL titles due to refereeing decisions going your way - not to mention the first 5 were tinpot European Cups compared to later tournaments - the whole early history of the European Cup and the involvement of Santiago Bernábeu and RM is another topic altogether) due to wrongly allowed offside goals (1998, 2017) on top of my head so this "UEFAlona" nonsense is what it is. There is no top club in Europe that has had so many favorable refereeing decisions and outright luck than RM. We saw it last season once again. But for your lot this is normal so you get very upset when somebody points the obvious out.
Here is your "clean" RM history.
I cannot post Youtube links yet, but write "
Real Madrid-TV3:La leyenda negra de la gloria blanca, la gran estafa de Franco. SUBT. ESPAÑOL CC".
As for Franco being anti-royal, it has to be one of the worst jokes out there. The same Franco made Spain a kingdom shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War and personally appointed a successor (Juan Carlos I) years before he died. Nice try, though. However Franco was a well-known anti-Catalan bigot whose regime forbade and actively combated Catalan language, Catalan identity and Catalan culture but you "curiously" forgot to mention all of that as if the world is ignorant of those historical facts.
Which is why FC Barcelona is the most followed sports club in the world across all social media and arguably the club that has had the most iconic football players in its history. On the other hand who genuinely likes or even respects Chelsea other than Chelsea fans? Tinpot club only made relevant by a criminal Russian oligarch some 19 years ago. No offense.
As for Luka Doncic, he never destroyed European basketball, he won 1 Euroleague in 3 seasons. Great Slovenian player though.
Anyway Pau Gasol > Doncic.
Marketing plot? Are you joking? It was first used in January 1968 by Narcís de Carreras after he was elected as president. Franco died in November of 1975.
https://blogs.20minutos.es/yaestael...el-eslogan-mes-que-un-club-del-f-c-barcelona/
It was a clear reference to the Franco fascist dictatorship and its well-known oppression of Catalan culture, language etc. Hence "més que un club" having a political origin more than anything (hence my initial comments about Catalanism) which must be understood in the context of the Franco regime (1968). Narcís de Carreras later claimed that it was also a reference to the multiple sports sections of Barça (Barça not just being a football club only) that ironically became enormously successful AFTER Franco's death.
As I already wrote, later this slogan (which is just that, a slogan) was used to explain the overall club values and the playing style of offensive possession based football.
