It should have been about Mr. Champions League, not Mr. Super League.
Carlo Ancelotti made his sixth European Cup final on Wednesday night with a 2-1 win for Real Madrid over Bayern Munich (4-3 on aggregate) and like always, the simplification and freedom that he awards to his players was a deciding factor.
When Thomas Tuchel out-thought himself by taking off Jamal Musiala and Harry Kane, Don Carlo kept it simple by chucking on the big man up front, and he was rewarded with two jaw-dropping late goals from Joselu.
Remembered for his failed stints at Newcastle and Stoke, striker Joselu sums up the magic of LaLiga champion Ancelotti this season, stepping up despite hammer blow after hammer blow early on in the season.
If losing Karim Benzema to Al Ittihad wasn’t enough, Thibaut Courtious, Eder Militao and David Alaba all picking up anterior cruciate ligament injuries should have been the end of Madrid’s season – now they’re likely to complete one of their greatest-ever.
It’s a tribute to their four-time champion of a coach, but instead, he shifted the credit to the most unsavoury of recipients post-match.
“There is a captain here and his name is Florentino Pérez,” the 65-year-old said. “The rest of us are sailors. He has been able to create this wonderful generation of footballers.
“It is a family. Managed very well by the president. It is a football club with a history and tradition that matters. Those who work here are lucky to wear this shirt.”
That tradition is a staggering 14 European Cups, which looks very likely to become 15 on June 1 when Madrid take on underdogs Borussia Dortmund at Wembley in the final.
It really does feel like there’s no stopping Real in the Champions League, which makes Ancelotti’s praise all the more baffling when the best chance of them exiting the competition is president Perez himself.
Just five months ago the godfather of the Galacticos was standing in front of those 14 trophies, willing to throw them all in the bin in favour of his failed Super League project.
Speaking after a European court ruling barred UEFA from blocking the formation of the breakaway project, Perez said Real were ‘masters of their destiny’ a destiny, which if he gets his own way, lies outside of the Champions League – the ‘history and tradition’ that Ancelotti so proudly spoke of.
The irony of the imagery wasn’t lost on many, particularly one of his great rivals, Paris Saint-Germain chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who succinctly commented: “It’s strange to talk about the Super League with the UEFA Champions League trophies behind you.”
Perez, though, saw the moment as a triumph, an opportunity to grandstand after his greatest humiliation – the collapse of the European Super League in 2021. On that occasion, it wasn’t the backdrop of trophies, it was the laughable football tabloid show El Chiringuito de Jugones, with Perez telling the comedy hosts on the night that shocked the footballing world that ‘no side could leave the competition’, before nine of the 12 founding members dropped like flies.
It was the ultimate humiliation for the 77-year-old businessmen, but as LaLiga president Javier Tebas put it: “Florentino always wins.”
Making his way back, Perez’s hiring, promotion, and backing of Juni Calafat has led to arguably the best squad in world football, littered with cheap scouting successes and even Galactico-style buys that have proved to be flawless.
One of them, 2018’s £38million signing from Flamengo, Vinicius Junior, even made sure to follow Ancelotti’s tribute after the Bayern win, thanking the president for ‘bringing him to the biggest club in the world’ a player-president statement almost unheard of in Spanish football.
Nevertheless, Perez got his mojo back, and in 2022 was back at the very top of the game, winning another Champions League against Liverpool in Paris, a competition many, including UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin, believed his side should have been banned from due to their Super League exploits.
A year later, he saw his team taken to pieces by eventual champions Manchester City in the semi-finals with a 4-0 victory one of the most dominant the final four of the competition has ever seen. But remember what Tebas said – Perez always wins.
This season, a round earlier, the president got to watch his side exact revenge on City, booking their semi-final berth against Bayern, and now probable win against Dortmund.
That penalty success against Pep Guardiola’s side would have been a highlight in a career full of them for Perez, who, in the home tie at the Santiago Bernabéu, flexed his might just a little too much.
In his director’s box for the 3-3 first leg were seven government ministers, images of which were plastered across media from outside the capital, and instantly jumped upon by Tebas. “The photo of the Manchester City box says it all,” he commented. “I didn’t see that photo in the Metropolitano (Atletico Madrid v Dortmund) the next day. We know that he is a very influential person, or too influential. Florentino is transversal, I think he has too much influence in sport and football. I think that is not good at all for the country or for football.”
Adding to those comments, one of the leaders of the country’s coalition government from 2019-2023, Podemos head Irene Montero, also attacked the perceived show of power. “The problem with the Real Madrid box is the ostentation of Florentino Pérez,” she said at a rally in Bilabo. “Without standing for election he commands more than any minister. That is the problem with the box, that you go to the Bernabéu box to kneel in front of Florentino Pérez. Florentino allows himself the luxury of explaining to all of Spain, live and direct, that he is in charge enough to slap the mayor of Madrid and to have seven socialist ministers in his box watching on.”
As is the culture at the Bernabeu, all of this can be ignored if winning is on the weekly menu, and it certainly has been, with a 36th LaLiga title secured courtesy of a Clasico double over fiercest of rivals Barcelona. Next, following their likely triumph over Dortmund, it will be another win for Perez, the signing of Kylian Mbappe. The man who spurned him in 2022 is by all accounts expected to come grovelling back from Paris on perhaps the greatest free transfer the game has ever seen.
So why then, should Madrid fans have anything to complain about? When Perez wins, they win, and if someone as universally loved as Ancelotti can’t even see it, maybe we should all just accept their rightful place at the top of the game.
The question is, though, can Perez accept that? And with the footballing landscape shifting faster than ever before with the expanding Champions League and Club World Cup, could we in fact be handing power back over to the man who tried to tear apart European football for his own benefit?
Time will tell, but whatever happens, just remember – Perez always wins.
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