Many homes will be paralyzed this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Real Madrid hosts Barcelona in one of the most followed matches on the planet, one of the most marked rivalries in football. Perhaps it is not the most decisive of recent times, since the whites have half the League in their bag (ten points over Sevilla, 15 over the azulgrana, although with one more game), but no one doubts that during the ninety minutes that the confrontation. No one will think about rankings, past or future. Only the present will matter in a clash with whose nomenclature no one doubts: The classic. However, a Madrid-Barça game was not always known that way. Before, the classicas the meaning of the most important duel in a country, was another.
Overtaking gradual
Until the 2011-12 season, the most repeated match between two Spanish teams was the one between the white team and Athletic Club. Up to 215 times the faces had been seen in the now known as old classic. In December 2011, the overtakingbut the denomination had long since been stolen. Little by little, as the rivalry between Madrid and Barça grew, the name changed hands. During the 1990s, many already referred to the clash between the Madridistas and the Blaugranas in this way, but it was during the first decade of the 2000s that the final blow took place.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, protagonists of the growth of the rivalry.
STRINGER/SPAIN (REUTERS)
The Press began to settle the current consideration and was penetrating naturallywhile both sets were the great winners of Spanish football. The rivalry to sign Di Stéfano in the 1950s, Cruyff’s landing in Barcelona in the 1970s, the birth and consolidation of the Fifth of the Vulture in the 80s and 90s, the Dream TeamMadrid de la Séptima and so on until the change of century, which ended with the whites as the best club of the 20th century. The galacticsthe eternal friction between the Barça of Guardiola and the one of Mourinho and the later Madrid Champions three-time champion with Zidane against the best Messi have exponentially increased the competition to be the biggest club in our country, and in Europe, in the 21st century.
Other examples
And it is that a classic is that, the most important party of a specific country. Many have surnames, prefixes or suffixes. Have a Super classic (Mouth-River), The Classic of Classics (Chivas-America) or The classic (Olympique Marsella-PSG), which replicates the name of Madrid-Barça with the logical language change. There are derbies, like the Derby of Italy (Juventus-Inter) o The Old Firm Derby (Celtic-Glasgow Rangers), and at times the Spanish Classic was called that. Wrong name, since to be considered as such it must be a confrontation between two teams that share a city, see the Madrid derby between Madrid and Atleti or the barcelona derby, between Barça and Espanyol. In short, there is no exact date of the baptism of Madrid-Barça as The classica name that has been germinating by the weight of history.