BARCELONA, Spain \u2014 Florentino P\u00e9rez has earned four more years as Real Madrid\u2019s president after winning club elections on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to keep working so that Real Madrid keeps winning more titles,\u201d he told his supporters at a late night victory party soon after Real Madrid’s club television channel reported P\u00e9rez had beaten challenger Enrique Riquelme.<\/p>\n
The club is yet to make the vote count public.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez\u2019s victory will pave the way for him to bring back Portuguese coach Jos\u00e9 Mourinho for a second stint at Madrid. Mourinho, who coached Madrid from 2010-2013, was featured in promotional material for P\u00e9rez during the campaign.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez said he was \u201cproud that Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, one of the best coaches in the world, is set to return.\u201d<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez has also said he wants to sign Liverpool center back Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 and Inter Milan right back Denzel Dumfries, in addition to a pledge to bring in another major signing to be disclosed this week worth more than 150 million euros ($173 million).<\/p>\n
The 79-year-old P\u00e9rez ran Madrid from 2000-2006 and from 2009 until now. Under his leadership, Madrid has won seven of its record 15 European Cups.<\/p>\n
Madrid has also been the most valuable club in the world for the last five years, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez, who also runs an international construction company, hadn’t been challenged for Madrid\u2019s presidency by a rival candidate in over 20 years. He ran unchallenged when elections were scheduled in 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025.<\/p>\n
That said, P\u00e9rez has had a frustrating run of late. His Super League scheme to launch a rival competition to UEFA\u2019s Champions League fell through, and Madrid has gone two seasons without winning a title despite recruiting star striker Kylian Mbapp\u00e9.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez has also been criticized for last year floating the idea of selling 10% of the club to private investors, a move that would break with 124 years of the member ownership model.<\/p>\n
Riquelme congratulated P\u00e9rez and accepted the result. But he signaled that he will consider running again. P\u00e9rez\u2019s term will run through 2030.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, this is not the end, this is the beginning,\u201d Riquelme said. \u201cReal Madrid won\u2019t spend another 20 years without holding elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riquelme, a renewable energy executive, launched his candidacy after an agitated P\u00e9rez announced elections last month during a news conference when he dared anyone to challenge him and denounced what he called a media campaign to topple him.<\/p>\n
Despite being relatively unknown to the wider public, the 37-year-old Riquelme mounted a credible campaign after getting the backing of former Madrid players such as Ra\u00fal Gonz\u00e1lez, Fernando Hierro and Iker Casillas. He also promised to sign Manchester City star Erling Haaland. City and Haaland’s agent dismissed the chance of him moving to Madrid this summer.<\/p>\n
There were 98,000 club members eligible to vote. The election was held at Madrid\u2019s basketball pavilion because the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium is being used for an event by Pope Leo XIV during his weeklong visit to Spain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain \u2014 Florentino P\u00e9rez has earned four more years as Real Madrid\u2019s president after winning club elections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2641,82,1743,10528,5534],"class_list":["post-36488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-elections","tag-madrid","tag-soccer","tag-top-ap-news","tag-wires-bot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}