Florentino Perez to renew Real Madrid presidency until 2025
By Tom Gott
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez will extend his stay in office for another four years after no other candidates put themselves forward to replace him.
Perez arrived at Real in 2000 and quickly kicked off his Galacticos shopping spree, luring big names like Ronaldo, David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo to the Santiago Bernabeu in his first nine years.
The president is now in his fifth term at Real, having taken a break of three years, three months and three days between 2006 and 2009, and the club confirmed on their official website that he will soon begin his sixth after nobody ran against him in the 2021 elections. An announcement is expected on Tuesday.
The news comes just two weeks after Perez reached his 1,000th game at the helm of Real - the 2-0 win over Eibar in early April.
Under Perez's leadership, Real have won no fewer than 47 major trophies across both football and basketball, and they could take that number to 49 if they win both La Liga and the Champions League this season.
Florentino Pérez: "We hope to return to normality in 2021 and be able to share in many successes together"#RealMadrid
— Real Madrid C.F. ???? (@realmadriden) January 1, 2021
The success has obviously been great, but Perez has also earned plenty of praise for his work to keep Real among the most modern sides around. He has used the COVID-19 outbreak to accelerate work on a new stadium for the club and has also rejuvenated the training ground in recent years.
Perez intends to continue that work, but he also has plenty of focus on the transfer market as he hopes to create a new era of undisputed dominance for Los Blancos.
Real have won 'just' three league titles this decade and have not won the Champions League since 2018, and while that doesn't exactly sound like the worst life to live, Perez is not satisfied with Real's recent shortcomings.
That's why the likes of Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappe and Borussia Dortmund's Erling Haaland have found themselves on Real's radar. Perez wants to create a new super team and does not see how that is possible without at least one of the duo.
He has spent years plotting a move for Mbappe, patiently waiting for the Frenchman to enter the final year of his contract and therefore hit an affordable price bracket, although whether Real have the kind of money needed to sign Mbappe these days is up for debate.