Real Madrid: The devil works hard, Florentino Perez works harder

Florentino Perez is one of most notorious and smart businessmen in football. Here’s what the Real Madrid president did in order to nail down his post back in 2000!

Florentino Perez is one of the most shrewd businessmen and presidents that the footballing world has ever come across. The 71 year old Real Madrid president for sure does not have a very likeable personality to the public, but certainly does have nobody coming close to his brilliant and smart mind.

Florentino was interested in becoming Real Madrid’s president during the 2000 elections. His desperation was to such a high extent that he was ready to fulfil whatever wish of Real Madrid’s fans despite Lorenzo Sanz being the outright favourite to take continue his reign as the Whites’ president.

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At the cusp of the 21st century, Portugal’s Luis Figo was the best player in world. Unfortunately for the Whites, he was on the books of Real Madrid’s fiercest rivals F.C. Barcelona. However, Florentino Perez’s obsession with the potential presidential role with Real Madrid was so much that he put his thinking cap over his head.

The current Real Madrid president then decided to agree a pre-contract agreement with Luis Figo which said that if he were elected as the Whites’ president, Luis Figo would have to leave Barcelona for Madrid and failure to do so would result in Perez taking legal action against him.

Now, Luis Figo’s hatred for Real Madrid was apparent due to him playing for Barcelona. Since Perez was never the front runner to be president, the Portuguese blindly signed the pre-contract agreement. Madrid’s soon to be president then made it public that if Real Madrid fans did elect him as their president, he would land Luis Figo that very summer. The Madrid fans’ admiration for Figo was so high that they backed Perez, and to everyone’s surprise, was made the club’s president.

Figo was now in a mess of his own. His hatred and antagonism for Real Madrid was so much that he even dyed his hair blue and red in Barcelona colours and mocked Real Madrid at his former club’s trophy parading and celebrations. However, he was now left with no choice but to swallow his pride and sign for Real Madrid or face legal action for the breach of a contract.

Though against his wishes, Luis Figo had to sign for Real Madrid in order to escape from a potentially reputation breaking fine. He was then given the number 7 by Real Madrid but was visibly distraught at having to leave Barcelona. However, Barcelona’s fans now hated him and he is still among the most hated men in the club’s long history.

They made sure to slander his image wherever possible and would take advantage of every opportunity to hate on the Portuguese forward. Things got worse when Figo finally headed back to the Camp Nou in 2002 and that is incidentally when he also started to hate his former employer and its fan community in particular.

From the first minute, Luis Figo was subject to endless abuse and his family was not free from the hatred either. Barcelona fans still hate him and very often say.” We hate you now, for we loved you then.” Things started going downhill just in a space of ninety minutes when some fans even went on to hurl bottles of whiskey and a pig’s head at the best player then.

So much was the chaos that he was even called ‘judas’ by those in the stadium and the match had to be stopped for as long as fifteen minutes. It was considered as the biggest betrayal in the history of football, but Florentino Perez did not care less. He did get his wish of being Real Madrid’s wish fulfilled.

At the same time, he made visible, the real image of the so called ‘more than a club’ to the outer world as was seen from the treatment that Luis Figo was subject to. Eventually, Luis Figo began hating his ex-club and went on to become a legend at Real Madrid and win several accolades.

"“Playing in front of 100,000 who are against you is completely different when you’re expecting it compared with when you’re not. So it would have been a lot worse had I been booed at the Bernabéu. That would have made me think my career was over. People don’t talk about the violence my return provoked… These days Luis Figo is considered the bad guy, but what can you do?” were the former Barcelona and Real Madrid man’s words."

What do you make of Florentino Perez?