Barcelona vs Real Madrid Copa del Rey Finals History

Catalanes and "Merengues" have faced each other in five Copa del Rey finals (1936, 1968, 1974, 1983 and 1990) with a total of three Barça wins and two for Real Madrid.

The first occurred in 1936, less than a month previous to the Civil War, with victory for Real Madrid by 2-1, the match was played in Valencia, precisely where to today's game will be played (not the same field has the stadium was used for the Civil War and pretty much destroyed)

The second final (remembered as "bottles") in 1968 played in Madrid, ended with a tremendous controversy. With the disadvantage on the scoreboard, Madrid was trying to score to tie and two plays that were not called as penalties for them; this made fans at the Bernabeu pretty angry. The famous glass bottles started being thrown from the stands. Barça won, including a total scandal. Interestingly enough, from that date on, the Bernabeu banned the sale of drinks in glass containers.

The third final between the two in 1974, avenged Madrid from the 0-5 Barcelona gave them the same year in the league. The merengues won the Cup final 4-0 at the Vicente Calderon stadium (in Madrid, Atletico's home). At this point the Spanish Football Federation did not allowed foreigners to play the Cup and Barcelona played without Johan Cruyff who was the architect of the win in the league.

The fourth final Barça-Madrid in the Copa del Rey was held in June 1983, the stage was the Romareda in Zaragoza. A goal from Marcos Alonso at the last minute gave the victory to Barça (2-1), the german Bernard Schuster (who also played for Real Madrid and Pumas from Mexico) celebrated in front of the Real fans making a movement with his arm that means "Fuck you" that made history. In that  final, the greatest player ever, Diego Armando Maradona played for Barcelona and that despite the hard tackles from Camacho and Bonet was the key player of the Catalan victory on that occasion.

The fifth final between the two Spanish giants took place in April 5, 1990.  Barcelona beat Real Madrid 2-0 in the Luis Casanova Stadium in Valencia. The Catalans took the victory with goals from Amor and Julio Salinas. That day the blaugrana superiority was clear, a red card to Fernando Hierro made things easier for Laudrup (Danish) to lead his team to the victory.

Now, lets wait and see what happens in today's match. Regardless of the team of your preference, enjoy the game, have some drinks and remember that "Sports are divided in two types: 1- Football. 2- The rest."

Cheers lads,

Pepe