In recent times, when Real Madrid endures a disappointing season, like the last one, its media environment repeats the same mantra. It turns to the 15 European Cups.
It's its lifeline when current results don't go its way. It's a way to cover up sporting crises that have already become recurrent.
It's a simple, direct message, and that's why it's effective. But it's also incomplete. Deeply self-serving.
Because it reduces the history of soccer and sports to a single parameter, isolated and favorable to its interests. The problem is that this narrative doesn't withstand a broader, global, and fairer analysis.
The answer is in the titles… all of them
If the criterion for measuring a club's greatness is the number of European Cups won, it would make sense to take all of them into account. Not just those in men's soccer.
That's where Barça stands out. Because while Real Madrid boasts 15 European titles in soccer and 11 in basketball, Barça has a total of 48 European Cups across its different sports sections.
Handball, roller hockey, futsal, basketball, men's and women's soccer… the blaugrana club has built a sporting hegemony that has no comparison. What it has isn't a streak or a cycle; it's a decades-long project. That counts too.
Total dominance in the sections
In roller hockey alone, Barça has won 22 European Cups. In handball, another 12. In futsal, 4 more.
In basketball, although the difference with Madrid is notable (2 versus 11), the blaugrana team continues to compete at the highest level. To all that, you have to add the European Cups in women's soccer, which are already 3 and have made Barça a global reference.
This fact dismantles the argument of the Madridist media. Because if European greatness is the issue, Barça responds with facts. Not with memories.
Not with past epics. But with current trophies. In the plural.
The best multi-sport club in the world
The comparison allows no discussion. Real Madrid is a giant in men's soccer, and nobody questions that.
But if the goal is to assess the club as a global entity, FC Barcelona is far above. There's no comparison.
Moreover, the Madridist narrative resorts to an innocent trick, but one that works. When Real Madrid won its first five European Cups in a row, Barça didn't participate because only one team per country could play.
That is, if Barça didn't win LaLiga, it couldn't challenge Real Madrid for the European Cup. However, under the same circumstances, Real Madrid has won five of its last six Champions Leagues.
Without being league champion, it participated and won the Champions League. That's a detail that Madridist historians usually forget when comparing the trophy cabinets of both teams.
Real Madrid participated without being champion of Spain in the Champions Leagues it won in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2022, and 2024. It had that opportunity that was denied to Barcelona in the late fifties and early sixties.