Mike's Blog

This week one of my most hated people in the world, Florentino Pérez, resigned his position of chairman of Real Madrid. I was, predictably, pleased by this.

Pérez's legacy is decidedly mixed. Despite leaving a squad containing players like Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Robinho, and Roberto Carlos, and recently becoming the most profitable football club in the world, the performances on the pitch in recent months have shown the team in a distinctly mediocre light.

Real are no longer the most glamorous team in the Primera Liga, having ceded that title to Barcelona last season. On a European scale, a call from Real no longer means a transfer target is theirs, with Chelsea's moneybags and Barcelona's irresistible swagger.

Mediocrity on the pitch has almost inevitably been a result of the slew of managers Perez's Real has heralded at the Bernabeu. His first manager, Vicente del Bosque, was a quiet but respected man in the dressing room, who won Real two European Cups and two league titles in his three years in charge. But del Bosque seemingly lacked something for Pérez, who sacked him and installed Manchester United's assistant manager Professor Carlos Queiroz instead. He was sacked after a trophiless first season. In the eighteen months up to now, Real have had four more managers - Jose Antonio Camacho, Mariano Garcia Ramon, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, and current caretaker Juan Ramon Lopez Caro. No trophies have been won in this period.

Faced with a third successive trophiless season, unprecedented in Real's modern history, Pérez had no option but to resign with dignity, blaming his own galactico culture for the failure to impress. But one (possible apocryphal) tale sums up all the known problems at Pérez's Real Madrid. I'll leave this bit to Sid Lowe.

When Mariano García Remón left Ronaldo on the bench, Pérez asked him: "Who do you think you are to leave Ronaldo out?" García Rémon replied: "The coach." Within days, he was the ex-coach. Too many players simply do not care and those that do care grow more and more frustrated. "This club has lost its soul," one first-teamer privately insisted after Madrid were defeated by Barcelona in November. Now it has lost its emperor. The galactic era is over. Maybe now Real Madrid can become a football team once more.

I dislike many of the things Real Madrid stands for. The "only in Madrid" way they sold their training ground to wipe out their debts. The tapping up of Zidane by Pérez using a napkin (Pérez wrote "Do you want to play for Real Madrid?" in English on a napkin, and passed it across the room to Zidane, who printed "YES" next to it.) Their general self-righteousness. All of these were represented ostentatiously by Pérez, and showed the club up in a bad light.

If new chairman Fernando Martin Alvarez is to be believed, a much more humble Real Madrid will be the product of this change. About time too.