The Santiago Bernabéu is rarely described as a cauldron of noise, but hell hath no fury like Real Madrid supporters after a heavy defeat. As Barcelona trampled over their team last November, they turned their fire on their president Florentino Pérez, 85,000 supporters screaming “Florentino out”.
“Madrid’s plan is that there is no plan, there is no project. The plan is Florentino Pérez,” began a comment piece in yesterday’s edition of Marca, the staunchly pro-Madrid newspaper.
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It is hard to disagree. By refusing to appoint a sporting director, Pérez has become all-powerful and Madrid an institutional mess. In August the club bungled the transfer of David de Gea on deadline day, and in December endured further embarrassment by fielding an ineligible player in the Copa del Rey. They were swiftly thrown out of the competition.
Despite these recent troubles, Pérez’s commitment towards the club cannot be doubted. He attended his first Madrid game aged five, and since the death of his wife María Ángeles Sandoval in 2012, his focus on his team has further increased, attending reserve team matches as well as every first team game.
Yet there is an unescapable feeling Madrid have underachieved under his watch. In his 13 years they have won just three league titles and two Champions Leagues, the first in 2002 and the last in 2014, with an estimated €1 billion (£730 million) spent between them. Pérez would argue he is just making use of the club’s enormous riches which he helped amass.
A particularly shrewd move was to sell the land of the club’s training ground in 2001 to the local government for an estimated £206 million. That came a year after an even more outlandish idea: capturing Luis Figo from Barcelona. The self-made businessman, by then the director of the colossal ACS construction company, was so sure he could prise the brilliant Portuguese that he pledged to pay the fees of the club’s 75,000 members if he did not. His promise, fulfilled just a week later, won him the presidency from incumbent Lorenzo Sanz, who had steered the club to two Champions League wins in five years.
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Pérez had also pledged to “make Madrid belong to its members and not the play thing of two friends”, but later made the club less democratic. With the approval of executive members, he changed the club statutes to only allow members of more than 20 years to run for president. Any hopeful candidate also had to stump up €80 million (£59 million) of their own money as a guarantor. Surprise surprise, when it came to elections the following year, Pérez was unopposed.
With such tight criteria, it is difficult to see anyone mounting a serious challenge to Pérez in the immediate future. The only way he is likely to leave is of his own volition, as he did in February 2006, with the costly Galactico side containing Zidane and Beckham floundering on the pitch. Last month he dismissed the idea of quitting, declaring: “I grow in adversity, I’ve not considered resigning. The day will come one day but I’m not going to leave after losing 4-0 to Barcelona.”
Pérez has proved only too willing to go back on his word, but that tends to be when other people’s jobs are at stake. And it will take a lot more than cries of “Florentino out” for him to walk away again.
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