00:01Real Madrid are Spain's definitive club side.
00:06From the nation's capital, they have ruled Europe
00:09with unparalleled greatness for decades,
00:12becoming the natural home of the very best players
00:15and the very biggest trophies.
00:20Or maybe not.
00:23Perhaps Barcelona are the club that best represents Spain,
00:27a team from a regional city where football is a political identity,
00:32an entity that models itself on a collective, not a hierarchy,
00:37a place that has created as much beauty as success over its history.
00:45OK, so maybe there isn't a single definitive Spanish club side after all,
00:50but the domestic scene is dominated by that pair of titans.
00:54Collectively, they have won two-thirds of the available Primera DivisiĆ³n titles.
01:01Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Valencia and Real Sociedad
01:06are the only other clubs to win La Liga more than once.
01:12And this Real-Barca duopoly has brought the country enormous success.
01:20Spanish clubs have earned 20 UEFA Champions League
01:24and 14 Europa League titles, each a continental record.
01:31In the 21st century, as Spanish football has asserted itself more forcefully,
01:37nine Spanish sides have reached major continental finals,
01:41with seven different teams lifting silverware.
01:45That includes seven Europa Leagues for Sevilla.
01:50And eight Champions Leagues for Real Madrid.
01:59Real's modus operandi has always been straightforward.
02:04Identify the greatest footballers in the world
02:06and do whatever it takes to lure them to the Bernabeu.
02:11Los Blancos won the first five European Cup finals,
02:16thanks in no small part to the brilliance of Alfredo Di Stefano.
02:20Alfredo Di Stefano is one of the best players ever to have played football.
02:23We look back over the history of the game and talk about guys like Diego Maradona
02:27or Pele or Lionel Messi now,
02:29and Di Stefano deserves to rank right up amongst those
02:31as the best footballers of all time.
02:34A couple of generations later,
02:36the Galactico era saw a dazzling array of talents brought together
02:40with Zinedine Zidane lining up alongside David Beckett and Roberto Carlos.
02:47But that was surpassed by the Galactico's Mach 2,
02:50a group built around the star power of Cristiano Ronaldo.
02:54Between 2014 and 2024,
02:57Real won six Champions League finals,
03:00mostly in ruthless fashion.
03:04In this era,
03:06overseen by coaches Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti,
03:09Real have never espoused a philosophy.
03:12They've simply brought the best players in the world together
03:15and managed to keep them motivated enough
03:17to deliver trophy after trophy.
03:20and
03:21So on,
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