Florentino Pérez: Too alone to win, too strong to lose

It's just been 25 years since Florentino Pérez became president of Real Madrid. No, not yet, 25 years in office. It's a silver anniversary, in the loosest sense. Florentino resigned in 2006, regretting having indulged the Galácticos too much, only to return in 2009.

The episode established a fracture not only temporary in the so-called Florentine period : a reign, an abdication, and a restoration. The president, chastened, became less paternalistic, and more authoritarian and distrustful. Also, at the height of his regained power, he became more intransigent. He drifted toward thoughts and behaviors that disagreed with the opinions and decisions of others, which were fundamentally mistaken.

He brought to Madrid a Calvinist, marketing-driven entrepreneurial mentality with which to establish sports policy. He turned Madrid into a money-spending machine, sometimes squandering it, and another money-making machine, sometimes lavishly. The pursuit of balance and, if necessary, profit is a necessity for the club that has become an obsession, leading to blunders like the Super League. A shared project with a partner who is a drag. A suspicious entity clinging to its own singular, fraudulent financing .

Overall, the stature of Florentino, a name that needs no surname, is comparable only to that of Bernabéu , a surname that needs no first name. What Bernabéu conceived and created, Florentino has expanded and extended. Two giants, each in their own style and era. In an Olympic interpretation, they would be equivalent to Coubertin and Samaranch .

Today, the Great White Chief is a sniper, and his tribe is an island (oasis?) at the top of a football world hijacked by sheiks and magnates alien to its essence and geography. Upstarts and upstarts who have left the fans, symbolically, only the emotional ownership of the badges. Florentino asserts, with excessive force for these times, that he will keep the club in the hands of its members. He is too alone to win, but too strong to lose. And vice versa.

The resolution of this reversible paradox will largely determine Madrid's journey through the depths of the 21st century, filled with our sins and our penances. A long journey through a world redesigned by artificial intelligence. An oxymoron, a contradiction that is beginning to direct it without improving it.