The first Real Madrid vs. Barcelona match of the 2017-18 season is Saturday at the Bernabeu. While this fixture has been dominated by the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate for the last decade, there’s another matchup that pops into people’s minds: El Clasico vs Super Bowl. Which has higher TV ratings?
Real Madrid welcomes Barcelona to the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday, December 23, for the 175th league edition of El Clasico. The stakes couldn’t be higher with Real desperate to make up ground in La Liga, while a victory for Barcelona at the home of its greatest rival would effectively doom Zinedine Zidane’s men in their quest to defend the title.
The most expensive buyout clauses prove there is good money in soccer. Think about how many millionaires (and now billionaires) from across the world invest in football clubs. Perhaps one of the most immediate parameters to understanding just how much dough is going around the soccer market is to consider the most expensive buyout clauses in world football.
Lionel Messi was never a little-known quantity. When he scored nearly 500 goals for Newell’s Old Boys as a young boy, people took notice. That’s why Barcelona made the highly unusual decision to sign a 13-year-old foreign player. That’s why, aged 17 years, three months and 22 days, he became Barcelona’s youngest-ever representative in an official competition. It’s why he represented La Albiceleste, the two-time world champions, at 18.