Florentino's next move

The chips are being stacked in the Santiago Bernabéu's offices. According to the newspaper El Confidencial, president Florentino Pérez is preparing his next masterstroke to keep the Spanish capital club at the top of European clubs.

The enemies have changed. In a Europe where almost all clubs are privately owned by large fortunes from all over the world, who can afford to invest well above their accounting profit, a club that is still owned exclusively by each one of its members is a historical rarity that is doomed to disappear. Competing for the world's greatest players remains only partially possible because many of them still see the club as the perfect destination to develop their soccer. Although the team continues to achieve success on the pitch every season and despite the expertise of a president who has managed to take the club's revenues to a completely different level, Real Madrid's status is under serious threat.

Whether the option will be an IPO as was seen with Juventus or what has come to be known as “the German model”, the sale of part of the shares to companies in the ecosystem close to the club with major limitations on the transfer capacity, remains unknown. According to Perez's announcement at the last club assembly, the near future brings changes in the structure of the entity and that is the only certainty.

The truth is that, although this news could be discouraging for some members who dream of continuing to maintain control over the club, the confidence that Florentino Perez has earned with a sober and strong management that has led the club out of a decade full of economic difficulties with a more than enviable balance sheet will allow him to face future challenges without having to deal with too much opposition.

The man behind Madrid's greatest successes continues to work in the shadows to secure the destiny of the club that, as he likes to say at every presentation of a new signing, has always been his home.