Florentino Perez - man of mystery!

On a very lighter and clearly more sensible note than goalie dribbling make believe stats, seeing Thimmy at age 28 is rather surreal considering I've actually enjoyed your posts since I was a young(er) man all the way back on goal.com. Well, when you used to post drunk anyway. You and Rain were quite...mad. Or maybe she brought out the crazy. Bless that poster whomever she maybe.

Doc wrote:On a very lighter and clearly more sensible note than goalie dribbling make believe stats, seeing Thimmy at age 28 is rather surreal considering I've actually enjoyed your posts since I was a young(er) man all the way back on goal.com. Well, when you used to post drunk anyway. You and Rain were quite...mad. Or maybe she brought out the crazy. Bless that poster whomever she maybe.

Haha, I really miss those times. The forum was busier than ever, and you could always count on Rain to suddenly start ranting about the craziest things, like golden vagina juice and whatnot. Winding her up was always fun, and she certainly spiced things up when it was getting slow. I probably would've kept on doing it, if she was still around. I hardly ever get drunk these days, though. I've always enjoyed your posts, as well. I think it's great that some of the goal.com forum veterans are still around It is pretty surreal that I've been lurking and posting on these forums since I was a teenager. Never thought I'd stick around for so long.

After last week's events (winning CL and Zidane leaving) i have spent some time thinking about the club's past, present, and future so here is some information about our progress report as a Club and some questions about our future. (this is going to be long)

First of all, as a progress report in terms of our trophy cabinet, last year i did some research and based on the events of season 17/18 i can say the following.

Highest number of League titles we've had over FC Barcelona was 15 during the 89/90 season.

Highest number of European Cups we've had over FC Barcelona is 8, which is what currently stands. And thus obviously we are more dominant than ever as compared with all other clubs.

Average number of League titles we've had over FC Barcelona throughout our history is around 10, in 2006 we had 11 more, in 2018 we have 8 more. In my opinion we should never have less than an advantage of 10 so we should work on our League performance and not lose further ground.

In terms of our Club's finances, the last available data is for the 16/17 season, and that information states that our revenue was 674.6 million, net profit was 21.4 million, liquidity on June 30th 2017 was 178 million, and net debt on 6/30/2017 was -10.3 million. You can find more information by downloading the annual report off realmadrid.com or by going to the following link

https://www.managingmadrid.com/2017/9/20/16336286/real-madrid-reveal-financial-details-for-the-2016-17-season

For those that know about sports accounting, do these look like good numbers? How are we doing compared to other top elite Clubs? What does this say about our player spending/salaries power? Could we still be doing much better?

In terms of Florentino Perez, his second term is now looking like a great success if you restrict yourself to looking at numbers. The immensely talented (and rather stable in terms of composition) squads that we've had especially since the 10/11 season along with a great many factors clicking well in our favor has resulted in great success for us, but i think we can still do better in terms of our club as a futbol institution.

Some ideas :

Looking at the changes that Perez managed to incorporate and that apparently socios voted for a few years ago regarding presidential elections, some of the main requirements to run for presidency are having Spanish citizenship, to be a president you have to have been a socio for at least 20 years, 15 years for vice presidency, and 10 years for other high ranking positions, and you have to have 15% of the club's budget available from your own personal funds and linked to a Spanish bank. This last detail was the most controversial change as the Spanish law does not require the money to come directly from the candidate's pockets

More exact info here https://www.elconfidencial.com/deportes/futbol/2017-06-19/real-madrid-elecciones-presidencia-candidatura-unica-florentino-perez-jeque_1401453/

These changes result in making running for a president incredibly difficult and have established an unchallenged reign for Perez that looks more and more like a dictatorship.

When challenged in recent socio meetings about these changes, Perez has responded by saying that they were made to prevent foreign interests from taking the club away from the interests of its socios (like for example Oil barons from Qatar funding a puppet president), but this is a problematic response imo, especially when you see the clip he says this in (i don't think the guy debating against Perez did a good job at it btw)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkeKGa_8bGA&t=323s.

So looking towards the future, i wonder exactly what kind of ensembles of candidates will be able to run for presidency (does the 15% have to come from the person running for president or from him and his "junta directiva"?), i wonder just how much corruption there is involved in voting mechanisms as talked about here

https://www.elconfidencial.com/deportes/futbol/2016-10-22/florentino-real-madrid-asamblea-borja-martinez-laredo_1277644/

and i hope that Perez doesn't  manage to enact some kind of hand picked successor because in a 2014 interview by La Sexta i believe, he states that he has a ready successor for ACS but that it remains to be seen who his successor will be in Real Madrid, the way he states this kinda makes it seem like he wishes to have an influence over it, which he already does in a way as per the mentioned changes.

In conclusion, as a Club we are pretty much doing better than ever but i personally think we can make improvements to how we run our football operations and imo there are some serious and important  questions regarding future presidencies.

In case anyone gives a damn , I did some more research regarding the questions i had concerning Real Madrid's presidential elections and here's what i could gather.

Having read an October 8th 2012 edition of Real Madrid's "social statutes,"

https://www.realmadrid.com/socios/carnet-de-socio/estatutos-sociales

I gathered that changes were made to parts B, C, and D of article 40.

B: Established that to run for president you have to have been a socio for at least 20 years, 15 years for vice president, and 10 years for the other cases (i assume this refers to the board of directors).

C: Established that as a candidate you have to provide a guarantee from any "entity of credit, bank, or savings bank" registered in Spain that the candidates (includes President, vice president, and board of directors) can provide 15% of the club's budget from their own personal funds. This money guaranteed will then be taken into effect if the party in question wins.

D: Established that the club's electoral board could examine the candidatures by demanding additional information to verify that in no case the money guaranteed was provided by an outside party to the personal funds of the candidates, aka, the electoral board is given generalized and up for interpretations powers to examine the validity of the funds according to the part C of article 40.
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As such, the most controversial change from what was part of the statutes before,  made in September 2012 to article 40, consists of the fact that the candidates have to provide evidence that the funds are exclusively from their pockets.

But by investigating further i found out that a group of 15 Madridistas took Perez all the way to the supreme court because of these changes (B, C, D), and on March 15th 2018, the Spanish supreme dictated that parts B and C could stand but not part D as they "nullified the agreement by which Article 40 D was modified."

http://noticias.juridicas.com/actualidad/jurisprudencia/12799-el-supremo-estima-en-parte-el-recurso-de-los-socios-del-real-madrid-contra-la-reforma-de-los-estatutos-del-club/

Part D of Article 40 was nullified by the supreme court because they found that its parameters were too generalized and they had the potential of giving the electoral board the ability to unjustifiably negate the possibility to candidates to take charge based on inappropriate grounds.
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Now, i am unsure whether or not this actually means that part D has to be changed by law because the supreme court nullified it or whether this decision will not have any practical effect.

In summary, i can interpret that the major changes made in 2012 that differentiate the Madrid statutes  from the Spanish law established i believe in the early 90's, is that  candidates have to have been socios for longer, and that money has to be presented by the candidates at election time out of their own pockets as verified by the electoral board. But, this very last part, part D, has been nullified, which i believe could mean (if taken into effect) that third party involvement could still exist, thus making it easier for other candidates than Perez to step up to the plate.

Whatever, i could write more but fck it, this is enough.

So essentially, I could never be President of Real Madrid in this lifetime or the next

This is an interesting conversation to have, but it's very specific to Madrid and the remaining 3 clubs in spain which still exist as "association" and do not belong to a Majority shareholder.

The previsions made in the law for associations to allow any socios to have access to governance are cute but in practicality, it's normal to have restrictions in place to protect the interest of the club. But one may ask "whose interest exactly?" because what's important to me might not be important to someone else.

Now i dont know Perez well, but i believe that he is looking out for the best Interest of Real Madrid. And he took over the club from Sanz at a time where debt was ramping up and we were in great danger as an institution to go under.  Sanz was in fact putting the club at risk financially and only caring about the CLs he was winning. I think Perez made it a mission not to allow the club, even after he departs to be in that situation again.  

So going back to the requirements to become President, yes it should be accessible to all socios, but i think perez's intent was to create a vehicle within the laws of the club to make sure it's accessible to people with competency.

the problem here is that the underlying criteria for competency is the size of your bank account. and given that you are asked to provide a certain % of the club budget in guarantee, it does make the presidency accessible to only a select few. Obviously, Perez wants to ensure that the candidate is successful with money in a way to ensure great solvency for the club moving forward. It's almost all he cares about, and it's not stupid because as long as the club exists, makes money, even if we are not winning, we can continue to dream and think of doing better tomorrow.

i think there are other ways to ensure that the best interests of the club are protected, because that clause highly restricts the number of people who can put forth their candidacy to run Madrid.

Good response Nick, the "whose interest" question is indeed one of the core things to consider here and considering all the articles (a lot of them from AS) i read in the internet and the agendas that may inform them, judgement can be skewed and so i had to ultimately go to the mother source for this info.

It's hard to know Perez' exact interests but what can be said is that these are no doubt very stringent parameters that are deserving of more debate in the media for starters. I hope the socios who voted for this knew what they were doing and were not compromised as is alleged by some.

In the video i posted above Perez says that his desire is to keep the club's prestige and keep it with the socios, and one hopes that is really more or less the case.  

The clause doesn't only restrict the number of people but it may arguably shape the kind of people and projects that present themselves as well. I hope that who ever Perez' successor is can bring the best of both the sporting and financial worlds that ultimately serve the club well.

The changes made were primarily to prevent some foreigner from taking control of this national treasure! We’ve seen too many clubs (inside Spain and Europe) taken over by some rich Russian, American or Oil Nation, only to have them use their new toy for their own amusement and then shed off whatever profits when they lose interest.

Whether or not the changes are too restrictive or not, they have indeed plugged the concern. You guys have a lot of negative things to say about Flo (and I too, but only the first run), but he has made this club the most successful club in world, in terms of finances and on the field (both futball and basketball).

The other day, someone, I don’t remember who, joking said someday Zidane might be president. But these rules prevent that.

It is a bit restrictive.. I don't know if all of those changes were for the best of the club, namely because it means basically only Perez can be elected lol.

I'm sure there are many interested parties who have been socios for 20+ years, I am sure there are interested parties who have 15% of the club's budget, but having both is a big ask.

The requirement of being Spanish, is that citizenship or born in Spain? If it is born in Spain, that is a little too biased for me.

Having guidelines is a good idea, but some of these restrictions are disallowing good candidates to run the club. I doubt even a club legend like Raul would be able to match that 15%. Even if some "foreign invader boogie man" that some of you describe ran for president, they would still need to be elected.

i have never had a problem with those rules...we've had these arguments before though under different topics. i believe we had it around mourinho's last year iirc when there was some younger candidate who wanted to run, and people were calling for flo's head. it prevents any jabroni from stepping in, i've never had a problem with it (nor with flo for that matter). florentino has his negatives but from an economical standpoint, he's better than some of these hoodlums that run other la liga clubs

@vandeez there are interested parties but just cos they're interested doesn't mean they are right for the club. at least if you've been a socio for that time frame there's a vested interest in the club and as far the account info is concerned, you're not just getting some dude on the street with nothing to lose who might in turn do us in like jesus gil did atleti - mismanaging funds and all that.

does it benefit flo? yes, but having seen the likes of calderon and ramon sanz, neither of whom i was a fan of, i see nothing wrong with it. flo's issues have primarily been from a sporting standpoint, not from the business standpoint- which is just as important if not more important than the sporting

It's a bit too extreme tito... the issue is the years being a socio requirement. The financial strength part seems fine to me as it will stop those who are looking to enrich themselves from becoming a Real Madrid president.

Being a socio doesn’t automatically make you a good candidate either. The election process is meant to weed out the good and bad candidates, but if you can only select from a handful- you’re more likely to have a bad one.

the socio requirement prevents any sugar daddy stepping in and vandalizing things- which is possible ala the malaga situation. no, it doesn't automatically make you a good candidate but it also prevents some regular jabroni with billions stepping in and messing everything up. the idea is someone with a sort of vested interest in the club and not just someone interested in building hotels. i've seen years when those requirements weren't in place , and a bunch of idiots have run the club in those times. maybe now i want to see the flip side and see how that works

i have no problem with the age requirement, having 20 years as a socio is really not that difficult, specially if your family has a long heritage of belonging to madrid.

the 75 millions pooled between the president, vice president and board of directors can be a more stringent requirement.

And this has not been tested yet anyway, during the last election, Perez had just won a CL and no one bothered to put forth a campaign. However, it's been rumoured he wont seek reelection next time.

The budget of the club keeps going up and so the 15% asked from candidates keeps increasing as well. It helps that Perez is a billionaire so 80 might not be much for him, but we will find out in 2021

so basically, you guys want Real Madrid to be a nepotist autocracy... because that's where it's headed. It won't have anything to do with ability and ideas... it will be about time served and connections.

It's shit. Real Madrid won't stay on top for very long like this. Let's hope this nonsense goes away once Flo steps down.

Isnt the club already a form of Autocracy? the president is all powerful, there is no independent power in place elected by the fans like the senate or congress to counter balance Perez's power. that's the system now and that's how it's always been.

Adding the number of years are requirement to me only ensures that you have a long standing club member in charge, which again, guarantees that the club best interests will be respected.

If we decrease it to 15 years, is it that much of a difference?

Besides, it would be naive to think prior to Perez becoming president, this was never about time served and connections. Our presidents were not random socios who stood up one day and decided they had a revolutionary idea about how to run madrid. No they put in the time in social events around madrid, in the bernabeu, during official meetings, etc... they simply played politics.

Seniority is not a bad criteria for competency, but asking that one has 80 millions in their bank account to become a candidate is the real problem.

titosantill wrote:the socio requirement prevents any sugar daddy stepping in and vandalizing things- which is possible ala the malaga situation. no, it doesn't automatically make you a good candidate but it also prevents some regular jabroni with billions stepping in and messing everything up. the idea is someone with a sort of vested interest in the club and not just someone interested in building hotels. i've seen years when those requirements weren't in place , and a bunch of idiots have run the club in those times. maybe now i want to see the flip side and see how that works

So you believe that people like Zidane, Raul, Casillas, Ronaldo, Del Bosque etc. etc. should not be allowed to even be considered a potential presidential candidate?

Maybe Zidane and Del Bosque but certainly not Raul or Iker. I actually am being really generous in choosing the 1st two but ideally, I would not want any of them be President of this club. Firstly, would actually like a man or woman who understands the concept of running an organisation as vast as Real Madrid and the experience as well (the Pique route of taking some shit course in business management does not count). To which, none of them has any experience of the sort.

Secondly, I get the rules put in place and yeah, they are definitely geared to a certain part of society (the 1%) but it definitely would help choose the best candidates so we really do not end up with a Sanz or worse, a Calderon. A lot of resources are at stake to be left to someone who just wanna enrich themselves and bounce or to someone who honestly has not a clue of handling a business of this magnitude.

Thirdly, I used to read a blog when I was much younger, can't find it anymore obviously but a Socio Madridista used to say the wayward business model under Sanz and his eventual debt was just a continuation of the last (and great) president Madrid had before him, Ramon Mendoza. He was very much loved by the players but he also spent money like it never was gonna run out (it did).

vanDEEZ wrote:

titosantill wrote:the socio requirement prevents any sugar daddy stepping in and vandalizing things- which is possible ala the malaga situation. no, it doesn't automatically make you a good candidate but it also prevents some regular jabroni with billions stepping in and messing everything up. the idea is someone with a sort of vested interest in the club and not just someone interested in building hotels. i've seen years when those requirements weren't in place , and a bunch of idiots have run the club in those times. maybe now i want to see the flip side and see how that works

So you believe that people like Zidane, Raul, Casillas, Ronaldo, Del Bosque etc. etc. should not be allowed to even be considered a potential presidential candidate?

a great footballer certainly does not equate to a great president. fans like such moves because they were fans of those people as players. the same way many fans say things like they want raul or guti or xabi to be our coach, then ten games in they'll start with the "raul doesn't have any tactics, he should get an assistant coach or get fired altogether", that means they just want them as figureheads- and if that's the case there's always the honorary president role

the president role is more than football; it requires one to be innovative economically which flo is; and likely which anyone who's in that one percent doc mentioned would probably be as well (to have that much funds and be a socio for that long). the galacticos failed woefully on the pitch, but from a business standpoint- especially the beckham deal, (signing him going on tour to asia which was a big market for utd until we got becks), it was innovative

if any of those players qualify, then fine, but just cos its raul iker or even gento doesn't automatically mean they should be president. a good baker doesn't automatically mean they can run a bakery

Right over your head, continuing to miss the point.

I'm not completely against a former player going for the Madrid presidency. However, they have to have a very strong case for themselves and not just rely on their past glories as players to get it.

In that I mean, they need to prove that they're great with money, that they are perfectly capable of keeping Madrid a money-making machine with a very, very strong brand and spending power.

I'm not trying to disrespect any of them, but generally speaking, you shouldn't expect any of them to be finance experts. Or at least, not nearly as good as the owner of Spain's largest construction company.

Whoever succeeds Florentino should be an extremely successful businessman and a master negotiator. That's what guarantees success: someone who can generate money like God and who can convince any player to sign for them and swallows whole everybody sitting on the negotiation table.

Florentino is good, but he still has many areas to work on. Like for instance, I still can't get past that joke for a deal we have with Adidas worth 45m per year. Absolutely inacceptable for a club of this magnitude and success to be getting such a meager sum.

This is how one fails an exam easily, I totally did not answer the question. Yes, ideally, those names should be allowed to run for President of the club. Ideally. But realistically, I don't see how that'll be a good idea.

So you GL fans don’t like the rules!! Maybe we may get a bad apple out of the 1%, then again we may get another version of flo.

But you can look at country rules, such as the USA, and of the 1% that can run for president, you may get someone good with the country’s interest or then you can get Trump!

Despite Trump and a couple of bad other ones, the USA is the wealthiest country in the world and our unemployment is at a 16 year low...

When something works almost all the time... you don't scrap it because it fails once.

Also, Spain is a business and political model... for absolutely nothing. It's a mess on both counts. I understand that. I was just hoping that Real Madrid would strive for something more than the unfortunate institutional dysfunction of the country. And this is from someone who enjoys Spain a lot but is shocked (just like with France tbh) that people don't see how things are unsustainable as structured.

I think that one reason that many people would like to see past Legends as President and/or in other positions of power is because of the belief that they would have loyal and passionate intentions with the club along with a healthy management of the sporting aspects of the club. Having said this, i understand some of the points stated here and i think that it can at least be said then that legends could be considered for positions in the board of directors.

Here's a link of Madrid's current board

https://www.realmadrid.com/sobre-el-real-madrid/el-club/junta-directiva

and an article from 2011 that talks about Florentino Perez' and Sandro Rosell's board of directors (backgrounds, duties, etc).

http://www.expansion.com/2011/10/28/empresas/1319838285.html

Counting the President, there are 17 board members in Real Madrid so when it comes to the 15% budget thing, if for example that equates to 80 million then that would divide into around 5 million per member.

As described in the article, during Rosell's tenure, Antoni Rossich served as FC Barcelona's general director and was referred to by many in the club as "the boss," whilst Rosell divided specific duties between himself and his board members. In Perez' case our general director is Jose Angel Sanchez and many of the board of directors are friends of Perez for a long time, including childhood friends and his own brother.