FC Barcelona Info

FC Barcelona



Futbol Club Barcelona, known familiarly as Barça (Spanish IPA: [ˈbaɾsa], Catalan IPA: [ˈbaɾsə]), is a sports club based in Barcelona, Spain. It is best known for its football team, which was founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, English, and Spanish men led by Joan Gamper. The club has become a Catalan institution, hence the motto Més que un club (More than a club).

They were founding members of La Liga in 1928, and, together with Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, they have never been relegated from the top division. The club were also the first La Liga champions, winning a total of 18 La Liga, 24 Copa del Rey, 7 Supercopa de España, 2 UEFA Champions League, 4 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, 3 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and 2 European Super Cup trophies.

The club's main stadium is the Camp Nou and the fans of FC Barcelona are known as culers or culés. In Spain, about 25.7% of the population are said to be Barça supporters. In June 2007, the number of socis (club members/owners) reached 156,366, while in June 2006 the number of penyes (officially-registered supporter clubs) reached 1782 worldwide.

The club also operates a reserve team, FC Barcelona B, and four other professional sports teams, AXA FC Barcelona, FC Barcelona, FC Barcelona Futsal and FC Barcelona Sorli Discau that compete at basketball, handball, futsal and rink hockey respectively. Until 2007 there was also a youth team, FC Barcelona C.

There are also a number of prominent amateur sports teams that compete at rugby union, women's football and wheelchair basketball. These include FCB Rugby and FC Barcelona-Institut Guttman. Other amateur teams represent the club at ice hockey, athletics, baseball, cycling, field hockey, figure skating, and volleyball.

During the 2006-07 season, FC Barcelona was the third richest club in the world with a revenue of €291.1 million.

Stadium



he Camp Nou (, Catalan for "new field", often called the Nou Camp in both Spanish and English, sometimes erroneously spelt "newcamp" in English) is an association football stadium in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The stadium has been the home of FC Barcelona since its construction in 1957. It is a UEFA 5-star rated stadium, and has hosted numerous international matches at senior level, and UEFA Champions League finals, the most recent being in 1999. It has a capacity of 98,772, making it the largest stadium in Europe. Its official name was Estadi del FC Barcelona (FC Barcelona Stadium) until 2000, when the club membership voted to change the official name to the popular nickname, Camp Nou.

Opposite Camp Nou is the Palau Blaugrana, the stadium for indoor sports and adjacent is the Ice Rink, the stadium for ice based sports. Just behind the complex is the Mini Estadi, the stadium where the FC Barcelona B plays its games.

Barcelona had outgrown their old stadium. Camp de Les Corts which held 60,000 supporters and the Camp Nou, built between 1954 and 1957, was designed by architects Francesc Mitjans-Miró, Lorenzo García Barbon and Josep Soteras Mauri. FC Barcelona won their first game at Camp Nou in impressive fashion, a 4-2 victory against Legia Warsaw with Eulogio Martínez scoring the first goal at the new stadium. Over 90,000 fans were present at this momentous occasion.

The capacity has varied between 93,053 at its opening to 120,000 for the 1982 FIFA World Cup before the outlawing of standing sections at the stadium brought the capacity to below 99,000 in the late 1990s.

The stadium's facilities include a memorabilia shop, mini pitches for training matches, and a chapel for players. The stadium also houses the most visited museum in Catalonia, El Museu del Barça, which receives about 1,200,000 visits per year. The museum was inaugurated in 1984 under the presidence of Josep Lluís Nuñez. The museum shows 1,420 pieces about FC Barcelona's history, of which 420 are trophies. The inauguration ceremony of the 1982 World Cup was held on June 13. In front of a 100,000-strong crowd, Belgium beat Argentina 1-0.

Honours

Domestic competitions

La Liga Champions: 18
1929, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1959, 1960, 1974, 1985, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2005, 2006
Copa del Rey: 24 (record)
1910, 1912, 1913, 1920, 1922, 1925, 1926, 1928, 1942, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1978, 1981, 1983, 1988, 1990, 1997, 1998

Supercopa de España: 7
1983, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2005, 2006
Copa de la Liga: 2 (record)
1983, 1986

International competitions

UEFA Champions League: 2
1992, 2006
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup: 4 (record)
1979, 1982, 1989, 1997
European Super Cup: 2
1992, 1997
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup: 3 (record)
1958, 1960, 1966
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Trophy Play-Off: 1
1971