You’ve gotta be good to wear all white. Actually, more than good: You’ve gotta be great. Because when a team walks out on the pitch in all white, it’s bringing some holier-than-thou attitude. So it better play like 11 gods. Fortunately, Real Madrid is just about the only team on Earth that can pull it off. With 32 La Liga trophies, 18 Copa del Rey championships and nine Champions League titles, Los Blancos swagger through football in those pristine white kits, projecting a love-us-or-hate-us attitude. Love usually wins out: The millions of Madridistas around the world have made Real the world’s second-richest football club. It wasn’t always that way—swagger like this takes time. Back when it was founded as the Madrid Football Club in 1902, the team sported dark shorts and a white top with a diagonal dark sash (a more modest look, referenced today by the blue slash over white in the team’s logo). But that was then, before the team was elevated to something more than just another football team. By 1920—when King Alfonso XIII conferred the “Royal” title on the club—they’d adopted both the all-white uniform and the aura of greatness. What place is there for modesty when you’ve got a crown on the logo over your heart and royal favour at your back? The sheer presence Madrid carries is at its most potent in one of football’s greatest rivalries: “El Clasico.” Barcelona, the underdog Catalans, decked out in burgundy and blue; Madrid, the perennial favourites in perfect white. That relationship is what keeps this great contest alive, the feeling that no matter how dominant Barca becomes, they’re still lining up against Real Madrid, those white knights who carry themselves with the knowledge that behind them stands His Majesty King Juan Carlos the First, By the Grace of God, the King of Spain, King of Castile, of Léon, of Aragon… et cetera, et cetera. Madrid has had its share of on-field royalty, of course—the substance to back up that style. The list of players to don the famous uniform reads like a who’s who of the history of football: Di Stefano, Puskas, Raul, Zidane, Figo, Beckham, Casillas. And Cristiano Ronaldo, the perfect Madridista: the cocky superstar, the pretty boy you hate because he’s just so good and always looks like he knows it. So yeah, you’ve got to be arrogant to wear all white. And Real Madrid wears arrogance well.
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