This headline, a mix of the names of the two best presidents of Real Madrid, is borrowed from a colleague of Brand whose name I regret not remembering at the moment. He thus led a praise to the current one, Florentino Pérez, and it comes to mind to compare the performances of this and Santiago Bernabéu. There are many similarities and some differences.
Bernabéu became president of Real Madrid in 1943 and in 1947 he had completed a colossal stadium, which tripled the capacity of the previous one, the old Chamartín. He paid it with obligations subscribed by the partners. At the time he was called a visionary, but he was convinced that football was going to be the great entertainment for the middle and humble classes. It would take Barça ten years to imitate him.
He then created a great team, supported by the proceeds from that stadium. For 53-54 he signed Di Stéfano, in a tough fight with Barça always falsified in the versions written from there. (See Born to bother, Martínez Roca editions, pages 131 to 154). Madrid won their first League with him since the Republic, when they had won the only two they had (31-32 and 32-33). In parallel he contributed, with a group of visionaries convened by L’Equipe, to the creation of the European Cup, whose first edition, 55-56, attended as champion of the 54-55 League in Spain. He won it and that allowed him to go to the second, in which Athletic Bilbao, winner of the League, also participated. Bernabéu added a second galactic, the Frenchman Kopa, won the second European Cup and then linked three more, with the successive acquisitions of the Uruguayan-Spanish Santamaría, the Hungarian Puskas and the Brazilian Didí, the only one of them who failed. He won those first five editions in one attack.
In 1960 he inaugurated a Sports City, on land north of Madrid, so far from civilization at the time that Gento told him: “Why do you want this dry land here, Don Santiago?” He responded: “Paquito, all the toughs who come to this city will come along this road, because the money comes from the North. “This will be worth a lot of money.”
In that Sports City he created a pioneering quarry in Spain, whose first products, De Felipe, Serena, Grosso and Velázquez, were part of the team ye-yé which in 1966 reconquered the European Cup, in its eleventh edition. By then only Gento survived from the great era. The others had been overtaken by time. In 1962, the importation of foreigners had been prohibited, so that equipment ye-yé It was made up entirely of Spaniards.
At that time Santiago Bernabéu launched basketball in Spain. He realized that with a couple of Americans without a place in the NBA and some national players he could make a competitive team in Europe. In the sixties, television grew exponentially in Spain and one of the stars of the new medium was basketball Madrid, which came to save the programming on Christmas Eve and Christmas.
Two Americans and some very well-educated Spanish boys who raised their hands when necessary, the final moments of the European Cup were played either against an Italian team or against one from beyond the Iron Curtain, the mysterious communist world. This role as the main adversary of the communist demon, highly praised on television broadcasts, was the reason why Madrid was charged with the toll of Regime team. Atheistic communism was Franco’s main obsession, the Sentinel of the West.
Florentino cleans, fixes and gives splendor to the myth that Bernabéu established, to which he has given new impetus. He is putting the club back on top. Stadium, galacticos, Ciudad Deportiva, Champions titles, basketball… his work as a whole is impeccable, especially if we look at the second period, in which he has corrected the mistake of the first. Then he allowed himself to be dominated by his main players. Now he has put the club above everything, in the manner of Bernabéu, whose pulse did not tremble when he had to do without Didí before completing his first season or Di Stéfano when, close to 38 years old, he intended to continue playing . Florentino has done what was appropriate with Cristiano and Sergio Ramos. The contrast with what Bartomeu did with Messi and company explains the distance between both clubs at this time.
In titles, Florentino could surpass Bernabéu (7-6) in the European Cup-Champions if, as expected, Madrid beats Borussia. In the leagues there is still a great distance in favor of Bernabéu (16-7). Overall Florentino now has more titles, 34 (33 for Bernabéu), but that count includes the Super Cups, which did not exist in Bernabéu’s time. As the Intercontinental-World Cup did not exist during the first four European Cups.
Accounts aside, what there is no doubt is that Florentino has equaled the excellence of Bernabéu. He has returned the club to the same zenith in which it placed it in 1960. He has only failed, in the aim of emulating him, in his attempt to refound the European Cup, with that ugly and wasteful project of the Super League.
But the difficulties that both encountered are different. In 1943, Madrid was Madrid’s second team, after Atlético Aviación, the war winners, and Athletic, Barça and Valencia also preceded it. In 2000, when Florentino arrived, one of his first acts was to collect, together with Di Stéfano, the FIFA award for Best Club of the 20th Century.
In 1943 Spain was a country devastated by a civil war, and soon isolated from the world as the last vestige of fascist dictatorships. In 2000, Spain was a prosperous democracy with an economy competitive with all its surroundings, and certainly far superior to those of South America, a natural producer of football talents.
Contrary to what has been repeated like a mantra, Bernabéu did not have favors from the Regime. Among other things because he was not a Francoist, but a monarchist donjuanista. And at some point challenging in that sense. Anyone interested in this can search the archive of this newspaper (Real Madrid and the royal family, 9-14-2014) the adventures of the visit to the royal family in Lausanne, on the occasion of the match against Servette. At the time, any meeting or news with Don Juan’s family was censored, because it kept an eye on the English in a project to restore democracy. Those photos were published in the Madrid Bulletin, and only there.
The Regime denied Bernabéu, it can also be seen in the EL PAÍS archive (Bernabéu wanted to throw away the Bernabéu, 2-15-2015), what he did grant to Atlético and Barça: reclassify the old field (Metropolitano and Les Corts), to build a new one (Manzanares and Camp Nou). Florentino has had extensive institutional support from the reconversion of the Ciudad Deportiva (that land bought “at a cost” that Gento told me produced 80,000 million pesetas) to the reform of the Bernabéu, a sports area converted into a multipurpose area to the horror of the neighbors. .
In 1943 Madrid only had the old Chamartín, which had to be thrown away to make the new one. In 2000 it had the Sports City (with a basketball pavilion, which the club no longer has) and a stadium with successive expansions and a foundation for what has been done now.
Florentino inherited a heavy debt, incurred from the expansion of the Ramón Mendoza stadium and the repurchase by Lorenzo Sanz of the contract for the exploitation of marketing rights, which Mendoza once sold to Dorna, precisely in search of money for the expansion. . Those rights, later passed on to Gestsport, from the PRISA Group, were recovered by Lorenzo Sanz, who along with the debt left the means to face it. The sale of the old sports city plus the repurchase of the marketing rights were two bases magnificently used to economically remake the club and create a new sports city.
A great work in the footsteps of a giant, that is what Florentino has done. Something like that image of Valdano, when he said that they had found a Rolls Royce piled up in a haystack. He now he is shining. But the Rolls Royce was there. Bernabéu made Real Madrid the best Spanish brand in history. Florentino has been the only one of his successors capable of understanding and recovering that.
In two more things Bernabéu has an advantage over Florentino, to make the comparison quicker. One, in the treatment of the partner, and anyone who has been a partner in both eras will understand me. Another, who did not leave, scared, at the age of eight, because the club was falling on him. Florentino yes. He’s gone. With distance he understood that the club must be above any whim, and he corrected previous mistakes.
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