20 years since Florentino Pérez's arrival at Real Madrid: 20 years since Florentino Pérez's arrival at Real Madrid

In the heat of Real Madrid's international success, Lorenzo Sanz decided to ensure his permanence in the white presidency by calling elections early. He still had a year in office, until July 2001, but the victory in the 1999-2000 Champions League, unexpected in light of the team's performance throughout the course and driven by the figure of Vicente del Bosque, filled Sanz with confidence. “They convened on the march, without noticing anything. We thought we were going to win without disheveled,” reflected Juan Onieva, one of their vice presidents, some time later.

Sanz had restored Madrid to its European shine after 32 years traveling through the desert and had also shown a good eye on the market to incorporate, at very competent prices, footballers such as Panucci, McManaman, Roberto Carlos, Seedorf, Morientes, Suker, Mijatovic … His great operation was the signing of Anelka from Arsenal, for 5,600 million; It was a sports fiasco, but he ended up giving performance with two goals in the Champions League semifinals against Bayern. As soon as he became president, Florentino transferred him to PSG for 5.5 billion. The eaten for the served and, as a tip, one more Champions in the white cabinets.

Florentino Pérez arrived at these elections with the lesson well learned. At the time he tried politics, as a councilor for the UCD in the Madrid City Council and as secretary general of the Reformist Party, which tried unsuccessfully to bring Miquel Roca to the presidency of the Government. And in 1995 he launched to try to unseat Ramón Mendoza, who had already been weakened by the club's accounts at that time.. After a hard internal battle in which Mendoza neutralized the personal impetus of Villar Mir and Lorenzo Sanz, who ended up declaring heirs in that order, the elections for February 20, 1995 were called with three candidates: Mendoza, Florentino and Santiago Gómez Pintado, owner of the Otaysa network of vehicle dealers.

After five in the morning, more than eight hours after the closing of the polls and between complaints by Florentino's candidacy for manipulation of the vote by mail, Mendoza won by the hair: 15,203 votes in his favor, by 14,505 for Pérez ; a distance of only 698 votes. Gómez Pintado, with 4,154 supports, made possible the continuity of Mendoza by dividing the critical vote with the president; The belief that he was a straw man from Mendoza himself always swarmed over him, in fear of losing the presidency. Florentino stayed at the gates, but he learned his lesson. On that occasion, his candidacy released several names on the air as possible signings: Guerrero, Fran, Bergkamp, ​​Suker … In 2000, he bet everything on a Portuguese right winger who was dressed in azulgrana and that would be his entry ticket into the white presidency: Luis Figo.

At the same time that there are elections in Madrid, they are also held in Barcelona and the candidate who has the chance to win is Joan Gaspart, heir to Josep Lluís Núñez. Luis Figo, one of the stars of that Barcelona and his captain, views his promotion with suspicion, bored as he was waiting for a contract review: “I didn't trust a hair of him. The Moon can promise me, but he is a person who does not tell me anything, “commented Figo years later on the 'Universo Valdano' program. This situation reaches the ears of Florentino, with the mediation of an illustrious athlete like Paulo Futre, takes away from Figo and his agent, José Veiga, the written commitment to play for Real Madrid if the elections fall on the side of the then candidate; For his part, he promised to pay the 10,000 million pesetas (60 million euros) of his termination clause. To convince him to take a step like that, Florentino multiplied by six the salary of the still attacking culé.

On July 11, Florentino Pérez dropped the bomb that several days before the Cadena SER had already advanced: “I want to tell you that if I am president of Real Madrid, Figo will be a Real Madrid player. And see if I am sure of what I say, that if I am elected and Figo does not play for Madrid I promise to pay all members the fee for next season “. In the course that had just ended, that item represented 3,655,965,000 pesetas, almost 22 million euros. He had a trick: in the commitment signed by Figo's agent, he promised to indemnify Madrid with 35 million euros if they backed down, an unaffordable amount for the Portuguese, who at that time received just over 150 million pesetas per season; in Madrid he signed a salary of one billion pesetas per course.

In Lorenzo Sanz's candidacy, attempts were made to detract from the credibility of Florentino's promise: “What Mr. Pérez does is sell smoke. I do not know if it will have a pre-contract or not, but in any case it is not legal. Anyone in the world of football knows itThe pressure in Barcelona became unbearable for Figo, who received death threats for himself, his partner and his daughters, so much so that he retired to Sardinia waiting for the situation to be resolved. He came to wish that Florentino lost the elections so that the pre-contract signed by Veiga would be left as a wet paper; according to Futre himself, Figo used that pact as a pressure measure to improve his contract in Barcelona, because he did not believe that a president who had just won a Champions League like Sanz could lose.

But Sanz indeed lost, Florentino won and Figo's path was marked. “It was either Figo to Madrid or pay 35 million euros. He had to go to Madrid and he was in Sardinia, and he did not want to go. Veiga and I went from Lisbon to Sardinia. Figo and his partner were a poem, there was no way out I was tied to the clause. You had to put yourself in their place. He was one of the best in the world and was one of the lowest paid, he had a six times higher offer … “, revealed in his day Futre in 'El Chiringuito'. A little over a week after the elections, Figo was presented in the trophy room of the Santiago Bernabéu, in the company of Florentino and Di Stéfano. His serious face revealed his inner duel, but over time he settled in Madrid, where he played five seasons, scored 58 goals and won a Champions League and two Leagues, among other trophies. Now, he is one of Madrid's illustrious veterans and assiduously participates in the Corazón Classic Match, which brings together the best of white history each year for charitable reasons. To Barcelona that blow plunged him into a deep crisis from which it took years to recover; At his lowest point, he finished sixth in the 2002-03 League and had to settle for playing the UEFA Cup, in which he was eliminated in the second round by Scottish Celtic.

The great day arrived, on July 16, with Lorenzo Sanz and Florentino Pérez in the race and divided favoritism. The news of the signing of Figo revolutionized the chicken coop in such a way that the elections became a coin that would end up smiling at Florentino. The count lasted for 13 hours and was not confirmed (although the outcome was already estimated at the last minute) until half past ten the next day: 16,469 votes for Florentino, 13,302 for Sanz. An advantage of 3,167 votes based, above all, on the vote by mail. Polls at the ballot box during the voting day revealed that Sanz was leading by a slight margin, but Florentino learned that 1995 lesson well and designed a strategy in which appealing to the vote of those who could not attend the elections in person was key, They even put messengers who went to the homes of the members to collect their vote. Sanz denounced irregularities in that game of votes, but ended up granting the victory and congratulating the winner. “It has been seen that the Madrid partner, no matter how much European Cup he has won, wants a change. And he will have it,” Florentino said in his celebratory speech. On July 17, he was inaugurated president and the Florentino Pérez era began.

The rest is history. Florentino put the 60 million in the Figo clause and thus inaugurated the so-called Galactic era, in which Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Owen (these, in their first stage), Cristiano, Kaká, Benzema, Xabi Alonso, James, Hazard (these in the second, since 2009) were arriving… He managed to get the Madrid City Council to requalify the grounds of the old Sports City, located then in Plaza de Castilla, and with that money he repaired the battered accounts of the club (the debt amounted to 65,000 million pesetas) and built the new Real Madrid Sports City in Valdebebas. He won two Leagues and a European Cup in three consecutive seasons, but decided not to renew Del Bosque's contract and Madrid entered a spiral that ended with his resignation, on February 27, 2006: “I have rude the players and they have been confused,” he said that day.. That step aside also allowed him to focus more on his family and specifically on his wife, María de los Ángeles Sandoval, known to everyone as 'Pitina', who suffered from cancer from which she would recover, although she would relapse and unfortunately would die in 2012 .

In the summer of 2009, after the resignation of Ramón Calderón due to irregularities in an Assembly of Committees and the transitional stage of Vicente Boluda, he returned to the presidency after winning an election for lack of rivals (Juan Onieva and Eugenio Martínez Bravo appeared as possibilities, but finally they did not appear). He signed Pellegrini, then Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benítez, Lopetegui, Solari and Zidane, the coach who has given him the greatest joys. He accumulates 45 titles between the soccer and basketball sections (which he left in the hands of Juan Carlos Sánchez and Pablo Laso, with impressive results) and now focuses his efforts on the reform of the Santiago Bernabéu, which will end (in principle) in October 2022 and with which it intends to turn the white stadium into the tourist and sports epicenter of the Spanish capital.