My Quintessential Madrid Experience - Real Madrid

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There are two soccer (or futbol in Spanish) teams in Madrid. There is Real Madrid and also Atletico Madrid. Real is by far the most famous and is considered the upper class, rich team while Atletico is considered to be more the working class team. Yet, since Madrid (and Barcelona) have all the rich owners and high paying members, they have the money to buy the best players from the world and tend to dominate the league.

Because Real Madrid is so good, their games tend to be really expensive to see. For the biggest match of the year, Madrid vs Barcelona, tickets start around 150-200 Euros I am told. Even for just a regular, but good match, they run around 50 or 60 Euros. We saw a match coming up where the cheap seats were only 30 Euros, so we got a group together and went.

Obviously the match was not the best as the opposing team was not very good, but it was fun to experience a professional European soccer match in a MASSIVE stadium, and to see some of the worlds best players at work. Real's most famous player right now is Cristiano Ronaldo and is also considered one of the world's best players. The atmosphere was festive, but also not as lively as I was anticipating. I guess this is because as the rich man's team, a lot of people that go to these games are corporate big wigs with season tickets who one wouldn't call die-hard fans. They say to go to a Atletico game, which I really want to do as well, for a lot more pumped up crowd no matter how the game is going. But, Real still had a really fun cheering section that was moving and making tons of noise the entire game.

Most everyone in Madrid is either a big Real or Atletico fan and will always be willing to talk about soccer and brag how Spain are the champions of the world. It was great to be able to take part in such a important aspect of many Spaniards lives.

INTERESTING FACT: Not only is Ronaldo one of the best players in the world, he is also the highest paid soccer player in history. He was transferred from Manchester to Real for 80 million Euros or $132 million. On top of that, he makes 11 million Euros a year playing for Real.
In soccer, money talks, and whoever can is willing to pay the most, gets the best players!

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Photos

Cristiano Ronaldo
My camera's zoom was no match for the distance away from the field that we were.