An owner who isn’t afraid to spend

FLORENTINO PEREZ isn’t afraid to spend.

In his last tenure as president of Real Madrid Perez went through four directors of football, six coaches, 20 players – and a whopping €517 million in three years, as he introduced the world to the ‘galactico’ approach to team-building, in which he signed mega-stars to achieve success.

A building magnate, Perez is worth approximately €1.3 billion and owns 12% of Spain’s largest construction company, Actividades de Construccion y Servicios S.A., which he has headed since 1993.

His personal wealth was a huge help in regaining the Real Madrid presidency: Perez was sworn in for his second term unopposed when several challengers pulled out because they were unable to lodge the bank guarantee of €57.4m the club required from candidates who wished to take over from outgoing president Vicente Boluda.

Perez, 62, previously held the position of president between 2000 and 2006 and his galactico approach bore rich dividends; in that time Real won the Primera Liga twice and the Champions League with the contributions of star players such as Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo (the Brazilian version), Luis Figo and David Beckham. He opted out in 2006 to focus on his company’s approach to the worldwide downturn, but his return has been marked by the resurrection of the galactico approach, with Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo arriving at the Santiago Bernabeu this week.

Perez is genuinely passionate about Real Madrid, and the club’s long-standing rivalry with current champions Barcelona fires him in particular.

Perez took huge delight in capturing Luis Figo from the Catalan giants, and back in June 2003 he rang Spanish paper El Mundo to complain bitterly about an article which suggested Perez had ordered those working for him to find weak points in Joan Laporta’s campaign for the presidency of FC Barcelona. The suggestion was that Perez feared a Catalan revival if Laporta were elected, which is exactly what happened.

In September the same year Perez let fly at Claude Makelele when the defensive midfielder moved to Chelsea. The Madrid chief said in an interview with the magazine France Football that Real would not miss Makelele: “He wasn’t a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres,” Perez said. “Younger players will arrive who will cause Makelele to be forgotten.”

Makelele said he preferred not to respond to Perez’s comments at the time, but his departure marked the beginning of the end of the ‘Galacticos’ period, as Real Madrid foundered without Makelele’s tireless protection of their defence.

Most observers expect Perez to carry on spending, with Valencia’s David Villa,Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso and Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery believed to be on his shopping list.

So is Raul Albiol, Valencia’s defensive midfielder. So maybe Perez hasn’t forgotten Makelele after all.