Today I decided to actually look up every single past match result between Real Madrid and Arsenal. Figured it’d be straightforward – just hit up some football stats sites, right? Boy, was I wrong. Started simple enough: opened my laptop, fired up Google, and typed in exactly that: past matches Real Madrid vs Arsenal.
First Roadblock Hit Almost Immediately
Tons of links popped up, but guess what? None gave me one clean list. Most pages talked about recent friendlies or focused just on Champions League clashes. Needed everything, all competitions, period. Annoying. So I started trying site by site, digging into their histories.
Found one decent site with head-to-head stats. Got excited! Scrolled down… and hit a login wall asking for money just to see the full history. Nope. Closed that tab fast. Back to searching.
The Manual Deep Dive Phase
Got stubborn. Decided to piece this together manually. Here’s what I actually did:
- Started with * for European matches. Dug into their archives section. Took ages filtering through years for Champions League games. Scrawled dates and scores on a notepad: 2005-2006 Semi-finals, Real Madrid 0-1 Arsenal & Arsenal 0-0 Real Madrid. Found a couple more.
- Jumped over to Real Madrid’s official site next. Their historical matches section is a maze. Searched “Arsenal” in their database. Mostly got pre-season friendlies popping up! Clicked through dozens of pages. Found a handful more results, mostly losses for Madrid honestly, like that 5-1 thrashing years ago at some summer tournament.
- Then tried Arsenal’s site. Same story – friendly-heavy historical data. Sighed. Kept searching.
- Stumbled upon a lesser-known football database forum. People had threads asking for this exact info! Scanned pages of comments, comparing what fans remembered. Not super reliable, but gave me hints about matches in tournaments like the Emirates Cup.
Cross-Checking Chaos
My notepad was getting messy. Had dates, scores, but some conflicting info. 2006 Emirates Cup had different scores listed on different fan sites! Super frustrating. Needed primary sources.
Dug deeper into news archives for specific match dates. Found old BBC Sport match reports! Verified that Real Madrid lost 1-0 to Arsenal at the Bernabeu in pre-season 2013. Cross-referenced a South American sports site confirming the same. Painstaking work, honestly.
Finally Putting It Together
Spent hours doing this. Transferred my scribbles into a spreadsheet. Sorted everything chronologically. Realized they’ve only met officially a few times in UEFA competitions – mostly that 2006 semi-final – but surprisingly faced off quite a lot in summer tours and small tournaments over the decades.
The final list? Shorter than I expected. Mostly those UCL games and a string of friendlies, often played in neutral venues. Arsenal’s record looks pretty good against Madrid in these clashes, gotta admit!
Why was it so hard? No single place keeps a full, accurate, free list of every single match between these two, especially the non-competitive ones. You gotta hunt, double-check, and accept it’ll take a chunk of your afternoon. Lesson learned: football history data online is fragmented as heck.
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