The Trouble With Calderón

In a troubled year for Real Madrid, they seemed to have everything back on track with the appointment of Juande Ramos and the home victories against Valencia and Villarreal. That is, however, until the Spanish, Madrid-orientated, newspaper Marca decided to stir things up a little.

Technical manager Pedrag Mijatovic, already not known for his tough negotiating following the transfers of Wesley Sneijder, Lassana Diarra, and Klaas Jan Huntelaar, had made another mistake while executing his tasks. Only one of the two winter transfers is allowed to play in the UEFA Champions League.

The problem is, Mijatovic wasn’t overruled in any way by someone from inside the Real Madrid organization, not even chairman Ramon Calderón.

It is one thing to make a mistake, but it is another to not admit it. Real Madrid are willing to go as far as the CAS (the Court of Arbitration for Sport) to get both of the players eligible to play in the Champions League.

This kind of desperation, this kind of uncontrolled hysteria is not going to help the image of Real Madrid as one of football’s proudest clubs. Certainly not, when we just had the whole Cristiano Ronaldo issue, where chairman Calderón gave his opinion on the subject almost every week of the year.

Now there is the election fraud. On top of the former Madrid secretary that admitted she had deliberately influenced the elections in 2006 to help Calderón become club president, Marca again revealed a delicate and painful action from the Calderón management.

According to what Marca published today,  Tuesday January 13th, Calderón infiltrated a couple of false delegates within the so-called “Asamblea,” the general meeting of the board of directors that was held prior to the home game against Sevilla FC. By doing this, Calderón made sure that he would stay on as club president.

It is yet another controversial chapter in the already heavily criticised reign of this Real Madrid chairman, who promises a lot, but fails to deliver most of the times. When we also take into account that his media presence is far from desirable, we can only conclude one thing. Calderón is trouble, whether that is while doing his own job or commenting on that of others.

The time has come to acknowledge that things haven’t changed a bit since the Pérez era, and Real Madrid should do something about it in order to get their pride back.