The Royal Madrid Football Federation ( es, Real Federación de Fútbol de Madrid; RFFM) is the governing body of the sport of

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

in the

Community of Madrid The Community of Madrid (; es, Comunidad de Madrid ) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and of the Central Plateau (''Meseta Central''). Its capital and largest munici ...

, Spain. Its headquarters are in the city of

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Functions

Below the national level competitions controlled by the

Royal Spanish Football Federation The Royal Spanish Football Federation ( es, Real Federación Española de Fútbol; RFEF) is the governing body of football in Spain. It is based in La Ciudad del Fútbol of Las Rozas, a municipality near Madrid. It was founded on 14 October 1909 ...

(RFEF), the Madrid Federation has various functions, including administering: *Group 7 of the Tercera División RFEF (fifth level of the men's

Spanish football league system The Spanish football league system consists of several professional, semi-professional and non-professional leagues bound together hierarchically by promotion and relegation. The top two tiers of the male league pyramid—La Liga, Primera División ...

) *Further men's regional divisions headed by the ''Categoría Preferente'' *The region's qualifying tournament for the

Copa Federación de España The Copa Real Federación Española de Fútbol, popularly known as the Copa Federación (Federation Cup) or Copa RFEF, is a Spanish football competition for teams from the Segunda División B, the Tercera División and sometimes from the Preferent ...

*A group in the Spanish Women's regional leagues *Group 12 of the

Liga Nacional Juvenil de Fútbol The Liga Nacional Juvenil is the second level of the Spanish football league system for youth players 19 years old and under. It is administered by the RFEF and regional football federations. Currently the Liga Nacional has seventeen regional group ...

(second tier of youth football) *Several other regional leagues and cups in the pyramid systems of each youth age level *Various men's and women's age-group representative squads competing in nationwide contests *An amateur-level selection competing in the Spanish stage of the

UEFA Regions' Cup The UEFA Regions' Cup is a football competition for amateur teams in Europe, run by UEFA. It was held for the first time in 1999 and has been played biennially since. The 2019 champions are the Lower Silesia team from Poland. The competition was ...

*The

Madrid autonomous football team The Madrid autonomous football team is the regional football team for the Community of Madrid, Spain. They are not affiliated with FIFA or UEFA, because the Community of Madrid is represented internationally by the Spain national football team. The ...

- a squad of professionals which plays occasional

friendly matches An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, a scrimmage, a demonstration, a preseason game, a warmup match, or a preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or ...

against

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

international teams or fellow Spanish regional teams.

History

Founded in 1913 as the Centre Regional Federation ( es, Federación Regional Centro), the new organisation replaced the casual

Madrid Association of Foot-ball Clubs The Madrid Association of Foot-ball Clubs ( es, La Asociación Madrileña de Clubs de Foot-ball, AMCF) was a football association responsible for the administration of football in Madrid between 1902 and 1904. It was the first football association ...

which had been formed a decade earlier, between 1902 and 1904. The ''Centro'' Federation, expanded to include the wider Castile region but always dominated by clubs from the capital, particularly

Real Madrid CF Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (, meaning ''Royal Madrid Football Club''), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid. Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, the club has traditionally worn ...

, took over the running of the existing Madrid regional championship, the local league competition in which the best-placed teams qualified for the

Copa del Rey The Campeonato de España–Copa de Su Majestad el Rey, commonly known as Copa del Rey or simply La Copa and formerly known as Copa del Presidente de la República (1932–36) and Copa del Generalísimo (1939–76), is an annual knockout footbal ...

each year until these were disbanded in 1940. ''Centro'' also played regional representative matches, mostly friendlies but they also participated in the

Prince of Asturias Cup The Prince of Asturias Cup (, ) was an inter-regional football competition contested by the regional selections of Spain – selections of players from clubs from the region in question, meaning that players did not need to be native to the region ...

between

1915 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". *January 1 ...

and

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

, and winning twice, in

1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's ...

and

1918 This year is noted for the end of the First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide. Events Below, the events ...

, their most frequent opponent being

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...

. In 1932, the name changed to the Castilian Football Federation which remained in place until 1988, when separate federations were created for the established

autonomous communities of Spain eu, autonomia erkidegoa ca, comunitat autònoma gl, comunidade autónoma oc, comunautat autonòma an, comunidat autonoma ast, comunidá autónoma , alt_name = , map = , category = Autonomous administra ...

, therefore

Castile and León Castile and León ( es, Castilla y León ; ast-leo, Castiella y Llión ; gl, Castela e León ) is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the ...

, Castilla–La Mancha and Madrid have had different governing bodies since then. To celebrate the federation's centenary in 2013, a match was played between Madrid and the

Andalusia autonomous football team The Andalusia national football team is the national football team of Andalusia. They are not affiliated with FIFA or UEFA, because Andalusia is represented internationally by the Spain national football team. It mostly plays only friendly matches. ...

, the same opposition as for its 'golden jubilee' in 1963. However, matches are rarely played by the Madrid XI and other regions as such fixtures have not proven cost-effective to arrange, other than for the regions such as Catalonia and the Basque Country with leanings towards independence whose matches draw larger crowds.

References

External links

* {{Authority control

Football in the Community of Madrid Sports organizations established in 1913 1913 establishments in Spain Organisations based in Spain with royal patronage