New Football Club Barcelona FC

Futbol Club Barcelona Spanish
, known familiarly as Barça
is a sports club based in Barcelona,
Catalonia, Spain. It is best known for its football team, which was
founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, English, and Spanish men led by
Joan Gamper. The club has become a Catalan institution, hence the motto
Més que un club (More than a club).

They were founding member of La Liga in 1928, and, together with Real
Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, they have never been relegated from the top
division. The club were also the first La Liga champions, winning a
total of 18 La Liga, 24 Copa del Rey, 7 Supercopa de España, 2 UEFA
Champions League, 4 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, 3 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and
2 European Super Cup trophies.

The club's main stadium is the Camp Nou and the fans of FC Barcelona
are known as culés. In Spain, about 25% of the population are said to
be Barça supporters. In June 2007, the number of socis (club
members/owners) reached 156,366, while in June 2006 the number of
penyes (officially-registered supporter clubs) reached 1782 worldwide.
The club also operate a reserve team, FC Barcelona Atlètic, and four
other professional sports teams, Regal FC Barcelona, FC Barcelona, FC
Barcelona Futsal and FC Barcelona Sorli Discau that compete at
basketball, handball, futsal and rink hockey respectively. Until 2007
there was also a youth team, FC Barcelona C.

There are also a number of prominent amateur sports teams that compete
at rugby union, women's football and wheelchair basketball. These
include FCB Rugby and FC Barcelona-Institut Guttman. Other amateur
teams represent the club at ice hockey, athletics, baseball, cycling,
field hockey, figure skating, and volleyball.

During the 2006-07 season, FC Barcelona was the third richest club in
the world with a revenue of €291.1 million.
Josep Lluís Núñez was elected president of FC Barcelona in 1978. His
main objectives were to establish Barça as a world-class sports club
and to give the club financial stability. Besides, in 1979 and 1982 the
club won two of four European Cup Winners' Cups won in the Núñez era.
In June 1982 Diego Maradona was signed for a world record fee from Boca
Juniors. In the following season, under coach César Luis Menotti,
Barcelona and Maradona in an unforgettable final won the Copa del Rey,
beating Real Madrid. However Diego's time with Barça was short-lived
and he soon left for Napoli. At the start of the 1984/85 season, Terry
Venables was hired as manager and he won La Liga with stellar displays
by German midfielder Bernd Schuster. The next season, he took the team
to their second European Cup final, only to lose on penalties to Steaua
Bucureşti during a dramatic evening in Seville.
After the 1986 World Cup, English top scorer Gary Lineker was signed
along with goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta but the team could not achieve
success while Schuster was excluded from the team. Terry Venables was
subsequently fired at the beginning of the 1987/88 season and replaced
with Luis Aragonés. That season finished with a rebellion of the
players against president Núñez known as the Motín del Hesperia and the
1-0 victory at the Copa del Rey final against Real Sociedad.
In 1988 Johan Cruyff returned to the club as manager and assembled the
so-called Dream Team, named after the US basketball team that played at
the 1992 Summer Olympics hosted by Barcelona. He introduced players
like Josep Guardiola, José Mari Bakero, Txiki Beguiristáin, Jon Andoni
Goikoetxea, Gheorghe Hagi, Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Romário and
Hristo Stoichkov.

Under Cruyff's guidance, Barcelona won four consecutive La Liga titles
from 1991 to 1994. They beat Sampdoria in both the 1989 UEFA Cup
Winners' Cup final and the 1992 European Cup final at Wembley with a
legendary free kick goal from Dutch international Ronald Koeman. They
also won a Copa del Rey in 1990, the European Super Cup in 1992 and
three Supercopa de España. With 11 trophies, Cruijff became the club's
most successful manager to date. He also became the club's longest
serving manager. However, in his final two seasons, he failed to win
any trophies (not to mention the disastrous 4-0 defeat in the UEFA Champions League 1994 final against AC Milan) and fell out with
president Núñez, resulting in Cruijff's departure.
Cruijff was briefly replaced by Bobby Robson who took charge of the
club for a single season in 1996/97. He recruited Ronaldo from his
previous club, PSV Eindhoven and delivered a cup treble winning the
Copa del Rey, UEFA Cup Winners Cup and the Supercopa de España. Despite
his success, Robson was only ever seen as a short-term solution while
the club waited for Louis van Gaal to become available.
Like Maradona, Ronaldo only stayed a short time and he left for Inter
Milan. However, new heroes such as Luís Figo, Patrick Kluivert, Luis
Enrique Martínez and Rivaldo emerged and the team won a Copa del Rey/La
Liga double in 1998. In 1999 the club celebrated its 'centenari'
winning the Primera División title and Rivaldo became the fourth Barça
player to be awarded European Footballer of the Year. Despite this
domestic success, the failure to emulate Real Madrid in the UEFA
Champions League led to van Gaal and Núñez resigning in 2000.
The departures of Núñez and Van Gaal were nothing compared to that of
Luís Figo. As well as club vice-captain, Figo had become a cult hero
and was considered by Catalans to be one of their own. So the Barça
fans were distraught by Figo’s decision to join arch-rivals Real Madrid
and during subsequent visits to the Camp Nou Figo was given an
extremely hostile reception, including one occasion when a piglet's
head was thrown at him from the crowd. The next three years saw the
club in decline and managers came and went, including a short second
spell by Louis van Gaal. President Gaspart did not inspire confidence
off the field either and in 2003 he and Van Gaal resigned.

After the disappointment of the Gaspart era, the combination of a new
young president Joan Laporta and a young new manager, former Dutch and
AC Milan star Frank Rijkaard, saw the club bounce back. On the field,
an influx international players, including Ronaldinho, Deco, Henrik
Larsson, Samuel Eto'o and Rafael Márquez, combined with a nucleus of
home grown and Spanish players such as Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta,
Xavi, and Víctor Valdés led to the club's return to success.
Barça won La Liga and the Supercopa de España in 2004–05, and stars
Ronaldinho and Eto'o were voted first and third in the FIFA World
Player of the Year awards.
In 2005–06 Barcelona repeated their league and Supercup successes.
pinnacle of the league season arrived at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in a
3–0 victory over Real Madrid, Frank Rijkaard's second victory at the
Bernabeu, making him the first Barça manager to win there twice.
Ronaldinho's performance was so impressive that after his second, and
Barça's third goal the Real Madrid fans felt compelled to applaud him.
In the Champions' League Barça beat English club Arsenal 2–1 in the
final. Trailing 1-0 with less than 15 minutes left they came back to
win 2-1 for the club's first European Cup victory in 14 years.
Despite being the favourites and starting strongly, Barcelona finished
the 2006-07 season trophyless. A pre-season US tour was later blamed
for a string of injuries to key players, including leading scorer Eto'o
and rising star Lionel Messi. There was open feuding as Eto'o publicly
criticized coach Frank Rijkaard and Ronaldinho. Ronaldinho also
admitted that lack of fitness affected his form. In La Liga Barça
were in first place for much of the season, but inconsistency in the
New Year saw Real Madrid overtake them to become champions. Barça
advanced to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, winning the first leg
against Getafe 5-2, with a goal from Messi bringing comparison to
Maradona, but then lost the second leg 4-0. They took part in the 2006
FIFA Club World Cup, but were beaten in the final by a late goal
against Internacional. In the Champions League Barça were knocked out
of the competition in the last 16 by eventual runners-up Liverpool on
away goals.
Barcelona finshed 2007-08 season third in La Liga and reached the semi
-finals of the UEFA Champions League and Copa del Rey, both times
losing to the eventual champions Manchester United and Valencia,
respectively. A day after a 4-1 defeat by Real Madrid, Joan Laporta
announced that Barça B coach Josep Guardiola would take over Frank
Rijkaard's duties after June 30.
In the pre-season of 2008-09 a motion of no confidence was raised
against Joan Laporta. Laporta responded, with the assistance Director
of Football Txiki Begiristain, by a turnover of players, selling
Gianluca Zambrotta, Deco, Giovani dos Santos and Ronaldinho, replacing
them with Seydou Keita, Gerard Piqué, Martín Cáceres, Daniel Alves and
Aliaksandr Hleb. The no confidence motion received 60% support, short
of the 66% required to oust the president, and eight of his directors
resigned.
On 10 January 2009, FC Barcelona said they are interested in trading
Milan midfielder Emerson with Messi plus $20 millions.
There is often a fierce rivalry between the two strongest teams in a
national league, and this is particularly the case in La Liga, where
the game between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid CF is known as El Clá
sico. From the start the clubs were seen as representatives of two
rival regions in Spain, Catalonia and Castile, as well as of the two
cities themselves. The rivalry projects what many regard as the
political and other tensions felt between Catalans and the Castilians.
During the dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and (especially) of
Francisco Franco (1939 - 1975), all regional cultures were openly
suppressed (e.g., the peripheral languages were officially banned).
Symbolising Catalan people's desire for freedom, FC Barcelona became
more than a club (més que un club) for it and one of its greatest
ambassadors. According to Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Catalans' best way
of demonstrating their identity was by joining Barça. It was less risky
than joining a clandestine anti-Franco movement and allowed them to
express their dissidence.
On the contrary, Real Madrid was widely seen as the embodiment of the
sovereign oppressive centralism and the fascist regime at management
level and beyond. However, during the Spanish Civil War itself,
members of both clubs like Josep Sunyol and Rafael Sánchez Guerra
suffered at the hands of Franco supporters.

During the 1950s the rivalry was exacerbated significantly when the
clubs disputed the signing of Alfredo Di Stéfano, who finally played
for Real Madrid and was key in the subsequent success achieved by the
club. The 1960s saw the rivalry reach the European stage when they met
twice at the knock-out stages of the European Cup.

As nowadays FC Barcelona and Real Madrid are the two biggest and most
successful clubs in the league, the rivalry is renewed on an almost
annual basis with both teams often challenging each other for the
league championship. The latest Clásico was played in the Camp Nou and
ended with a 2-0 win for Barcelona, with late goals from Samuel Eto'o
and Lionel Messi. A week afterwards they won against Villareal,
finishing the winning streak against the rest of the La Liga leaders.