So today I decided to dig into the whole history between Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid. Like, all the times they played each other. Sounded simple enough, right? Ha!
First Dumb Idea
Went straight to the biggest football stats site I know. Just typed “Rayo Vallecano vs Real Madrid history”. Got like a few recent seasons, maybe ten years back? Useless. Older stuff? Gone. Felt annoyed. Where’s the rest?
Scavenger Hunt Begins
Okay, plan B. Thought about Rayo’s website archives. What a joke. Searched around – nothing useful past maybe 2005. Dead ends everywhere. Realized I gotta piece this together like a jigsaw puzzle. Started grabbing bits from anywhere I could think of:
- Old league websites: Wayback Machine is a lifesaver! Dug into archives, found pages from the 90s. Layouts were awful, took forever to load. Copied dates like crazy.
- Random fan forums: Found some ancient threads from like 2003. People debating matches from the 1980s! Saved those posts immediately.
- Newspaper digital archives: Got a headache scrolling through microfilm scans online. But hey, spotted match reports from the 70s! Scorelines were there, buried in paragraphs.
- Official club encyclopedias (PDFs): Found a few online. Searched for “Madrid” and “Vallecano”. Tedious, but pulled out seasons and divisions.
The Spreadsheet Nightmare
Had dates and scores flying everywhere. Opened a spreadsheet – my new best friend and worst enemy.
- Columns: Season, Date, Competition, Venue, Rayo Goals, Real Madrid Goals. Simple.
- Reality: Oh lord. Divisions kept changing! Rayo yo-yoed a lot. Had to note which league it was (Primera? Segunda?). Some old Copa del Rey matches were hard to confirm the exact round. Arguments about if a game was officially counted (replays, abandoned?).
- Biggest pain? Double-checking everything. Found conflicting info online. That forum post said 2-1 in 1988, the newspaper said 1-0. Had to dig deeper every time. Took hours.
Then I hit the oldest stuff. Pre-1970s? Brutal. Records are spotty. Found evidence of games way back in the 40s and even the 30s! Accuracy? Questionable, but included them with notes saying “info might be shaky”.
Putting It All Together
Finally, after days of this, had a mostly complete list. Chronological order? Easy. But wanted a visual timeline. Used the spreadsheet to generate it. Looked messy at first – too much text! Cleaned it up, added league context, made the scores stand out.
Here’s the rough breakdown it ended up showing:
- Early Encounters (1929-1950s): Found a handful, mostly lower league or friendlies.
- The Gap Years: Long stretches where they just didn’t meet because Rayo was in lower tiers.
- First Top-Flight Games (1970s): Rayo gets promoted! Actual competitive matches start appearing regularly.
- Yo-Yo Period (1980s-2000s): Rayo goes up and down. Matches happen in Segunda sometimes, Primera other times. Copa del Rey meetings pop up.
- Modern Era (2011-Present): Rayo gets more stable in La Liga (mostly). Frequent meetings every season. The timeline gets dense.
Finished the timeline. Looks solid. Shows the wins, draws, losses across decades. You can clearly see the long gaps when Rayo wasn’t in the top flight. Highlighted some of the big surprises too, like when Rayo actually beat them!
Honestly? This simple “history” project turned into a week-long detective grind. Never realized how hard finding verified old football data could be. Feels good to have it done though. The full timeline shows this kinda cool underdog vs giant story playing out over almost a century. Way more depth than I expected when I started!