Prince of Asturias Cup In the first half of the 20th century, the
Regional Centro Football Federation (which encompassed
Madrid and the wider
Castile region, and organised the
Campeonato Regional Centro for the local clubs) selected a representative team for
friendly matches, and also participated in the inter-regional
Prince of Asturias Cup, winning the competition on two occasions (1917 and 1918) when they were hosts. Due to incompetence of some federative leaders, the calendar of the
1917 tournament was allowed to be played on the same week as the
1917 Copa del Rey Final between
Madrid FC and
Arenas, something that prevented the Centro team from having the best players of Madrid FC, thus they had to send players from the likes of
Athletic Madrid and
Racing de Madrid to form a team which could compete. As a result, this side included lesser known players such as
Joaquín Pascual,
Ezequiel Montero,
Sócrates Quintana,
José Agüero,
Miguel Mieg and
Saturno Villaverde and
captain José María Castell, who was the only player of Madrid FC in the squad. Despite being a weaker side than in the previous tournaments, they managed to win the tournament for the first time in the team's history, with the then unknown Saturnino being the star of the tournament with three goals - a brace against
Catalonia in a 2-2 draw and the winner against
Cantabric in a 3-2 win - while Mieg and
Agüero scored the goals of the decisive game against Catalonia. In the
1918 edition, they were set up to face Cantabric in a two-legged final, and Centro won both games by an aggregate score of 6-3, with the Castilian goalscorers being
Feliciano Rey,
Gomar,
José María Sansinenea (2) and
Ramón Olalquiaga (2). They also had a memorable campaign in the
1923–24 Prince of Asturias Cup, where they beat
Galicia 1-0 in the quarter-finals just as Galicia had done to them in the quarter-finals of the
previous edition, and then defeated the
South team 2-1 in the semi-finals thanks to a brace from
Juan Monjardín, and in the
final against
Catalonia Monjardín appeared to have been the hero once more when he scored early at the beginning of extra time to put Madrid 4-3 up, but with two minutes remaining
Sagi-Barba leveled the scores at 4-4, forcing a replay in which Monjardín scored twice, but his efforts were in vain as Catalonia ran 3-2 winners.
Stagnation The
Centro Federation evolved into the
Castilian Football Federation in the 1930s, and into the Madrid Federation in the 1980s; both organisations considered themselves to be the successor to
Centro, using its 1913 foundation date as the basis for their celebrations of a 50th Anniversary in 1963 and 100th Anniversary in 2013, including special fixtures featuring a regional representative squad. ==Match history==