By florida How I tried digging up the Bilbao vs Madrid historical records
Right, so this started yesterday when someone in a footie chat asked “Who usually wins when Bilbao play Madrid?” and I realized I actually had no freaking clue beyond the recent stuff I’d seen. Felt like a right idiot. Decided then and there to look up every single damn result between Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid. Sounded straightforward, right? Ha!
First thing I did? Thought “Easy peasy, I’ll just find some footie stats site.” Typed like a madman into Google trying to find complete records. Found a couple sites alright, but they were all messed up. One only showed home games for Bilbao. Another had only La Liga stuff. Then one listed results but left out the damn dates completely! Useless. Felt like I was getting nowhere fast.
Frustration kicked in big time. Switched tactic. Went straight to the official La Liga history pages. Figured the source had to have it. Spent hours clicking through season after season, tournament after tournament – league, cups, super cups, the lot. Manually wrote down scores and dates on a crumpled piece of paper. My hand started cramping halfway through, proper pain. Even found some old stuff on forums talking about games from like the 1920s and 30s.
Started dumping everything into a big old spreadsheet, which quickly turned into a massive headache. Tried sorting it by year first. That seemed smart. Here’s kinda what I ended up having to wrestle with:
- La Liga games: Tons of these, stretching back forever. Kept finding gaps though.
- Copa del Rey clashes: Had to hunt separately for every stupid cup season. Dates were all over the shop.
- Supercopa matches: Fewer, easier to spot, but still had to confirm dates and places.
- Friendlies & old timey comps: Found a few, dates vague as hell. Mostly skipped these as “not official”.
Ran into dead ends constantly. Some seasons, especially way back when, seemed like records just vanished. Like, poof! Gone. Annoying as heck. Had to check multiple dodgy archive sites just to confirm a single score from 1947. Took ages.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime scrolling and typing, I cobbled together a rough timeline. From the first recorded matches kicking off in the early 1900s, right up to that super intense game last season. Ended up with a massive list. More Bilbao losses than wins overall, which figured, but found some cracking Bilbao wins tucked away in there too! Put all of it in a table sorted by year – easiest way to see the history laid out. Would I do this again? Honestly, probably not. It was proper messy getting a semi-complete picture. The further back you go, the murkier it gets. Ended up with loads of gaps and question marks. Kinda funny how something that seems simple turns into such a project!