On May 13, news came from Hupu that Antoine Simonneau, the correspondent of the French media team in Madrid, wrote a column about Florentino Perez.
After an hour and three minutes of lashing out, Perez blamed the media and accused "bad guys" who "want to take away the club and plan a ridiculous campaign to harm Real Madrid's interests, especially against himself." However, it is still unclear when this new presidential election will be held in the "White House" (that is, the club's headquarters).
"We will start the electoral process in about two weeks," Perez said vaguely.
At that point, potential candidates will have ten days to submit their applications.
Once Real Madrid's board of directors approves or rejects the nomination, if there are two or more candidates, a vote will be held 15 days later. If there is only one candidate, he will be elected on the day after the nomination deadline and no voting is required.
This was the case for Perez in the election on January 19, 2025, when he was re-elected without a competitor. Situations with such specific characteristics have occurred in the past five elections in which he was the only candidate, in 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2021. It is very likely to happen again this year. Note: There is a data error in the sentence. 2016 is not the election year mentioned in the original article. I revised it to 2017 based on the correct information and completed the rewriting task.
This particularly astute political strategist in the football field, in order to eliminate and prevent any potential competitors that may exist, in 2012, the current Real Madrid president made some changes to the charter and tightened the conditions for running for president.
Today, the boldest candidate must be a Spanish citizen, and he must also be a member of the club for more than 20 consecutive years.
What is particularly critical is that they must provide extremely strict and highly restrictive financial guarantees to a bank registered with the Bank of Spain, and demonstrate personal assets that can cover 15% of Real Madrid's budget.
With Real Madrid's current budget of 1.28 billion euros, each candidate must personally guarantee 187 million euros. This is nothing but a minuscule point for Perez, who has a personal fortune of 3.1 billion euros. According to Forbes magazine, by 2025, his wealth will rank tenth in Spain.
However, this is a huge obstacle for other candidates, who also have to bear the huge cost of obtaining a bank guarantee.
Perez carried out this election campaign to consolidate his power and enhance his legitimacy among Real Madrid members. Real Madrid is facing an unprecedented sporting crisis in 16 years. The past two seasons have yielded nothing and there is unrest in the dressing room, as evidenced by the conflict between Aurelian Chuameni and Federico Valverde last Thursday.
Perez claimed that he initiated the election so that those who wanted him to step down would stop complaining and take practical actions. He also asked why no one competed with him, saying that they must be afraid of him and let the businessman with a Mexican accent run.
The man he was referring to was club member Enrique Riquelme, a 37-year-old head of Cox Energy Group, which specializes in solar energy. Riquelme has never made any secret of his ambition to become Real Madrid president and is said to have considerable support.
But Florentino will not leave, that is to say, unless they kill me, otherwise, they will never let him leave. Perez summed it up in front of a room full of reporters who looked in disbelief, and these reporters were in the same embarrassing state as the Real Madrid club executives sitting in the front row.
The Real Madrid president completely lost control, indulged in a victim mentality, and attacked many of the issues that he has been obsessed with for a long time (such as the media, Laliga, referees, Barcelona or Negrrera cases, etc.), while also making two sexist remarks towards journalists. He said little about the sporting aspects of the club, showed no signs of self-reflection, and ultimately seemed to have brought trouble upon himself.