Football is the most popular sport, both in terms of participants and spectators, in Madrid. Madrid is the only city that had derby matches in the UEFA Champions League finals (2014 and 2016). History Origins Football was introduced to Madrid at the end of the 19th century, when the industrial exchange between the Spanish capital and Great Britain was in full effect. The first stone was laid around May 1879, when the Britons and some members of the city's high society agreed to form a society dedicated to cricket and football, the Cricket and Football Club of Madrid, which followed the British associations as a reference. It was registered at the time of its creation, thus becoming the first legalized sports club in the country. It is not known with certainty what the fate of this team was, although it seems that it disappeared a few years later. Football returned to the capital only after almost 20 years, through the academics and students of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, which included several Cambridge and Oxford University graduates. For the Spaniards, football meant a distraction from the pessimism that was taking over Spain due to the loss of its last colonies at the end of the 19th century. Football became their best source for escapism and so, together with the British graduates, they founded (Sociedad) Sky Football in December 1897, commonly known as La Sociedad (The Society) as it was the only one based in Madrid, playing on Vallecas and Sunday mornings at Moncloa, one of the historical football areas of Madrid. Sky began to play matches among its members to promote the new sport in the capital, and soon held its first Board meeting on 5 January 1898, in which the club was officially established and legalized. In its first years this entity only coexisted with the Association Sportive Française, which was also born in 1897, in parallel to the creation of Sky, possibly due to the relationship between the students of Lycée Français de Madrid and those from the Libre de Enseñanza. In 1900, three years after its founding, a conflict between members caused some of Sky's most important founding members to leave and create a new club, which later become Real Madrid CF. Said split was led by Julián Palacios, who is recognized as the first Real Madrid president, and was backed by the Giralts (Mario, José and