Florentino Perez sets out for 5th straight Presidency at Real Madrid | OneFootball

Real Madrid President Florentino Perez has an iron grip on the power at the Santiago Bernabeu, and even with his advancing years, is showing no sign of loosening it. This week he instigated the process in order to run for a fifth straight term at the summit.

This week he called a board meeting for Thursday the 9th of January, in which he will call elections, as was announced by the club in a short statement. The last four elections have seen Perez win unopposed, after he replaced Ramon Calderon in 2009. The elections are held every four years, and Perez will be 82 by the end of a sixth term, but there is little sign of any competitors being involved.

That in part is due to the highly prohibitive statutes brought into action in 2012 by Perez, which make challenging him very difficult. Anyone who wants to be president must have been a member for the last 20 years, must be Spanish, and personally able to guarantee 15% of the club’s budget, in contrast to the likes of Athletic Club and Barcelona, where external backers can get involved. For Real Madrid, that amounts to €156m of personal funds being available in this election cycle.