FLORENTINO GOES NUCLEAR: EVERY EXTRAORDINARY MOMENT FROM REAL MADRID'S MADDEST PRESS CONFERENCE IN YEARS
Real Madrid's 2025-26 season ended in humiliation. A 2-0 defeat to Barcelona in El Clasico handed their rivals a back-to-back La Liga title. Their third consecutive campaign without a major European trophy. A dressing room that descended into physical violence. A 33-million-signature petition demanding Kylian Mbappe's removal. And Alvaro Arbeloa, the interim manager, presiding over a side that had simply stopped functioning.
Any reasonable institutional response to this situation might involve reflection, acknowledgement, and a clear statement of direction. Florentino Pérez chose a different path.
He called a press conference.
1. "I AM NOT HERE TO TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL"
The first indication that this would not be a routine briefing came within sixty seconds. With a room full of journalists waiting to ask about the title race, the dressing room crisis, the managerial vacancy, and the summer rebuild, Pérez raised his hand and shut it all down.
He was not there, he said, to discuss sporting matters. He had no intention of addressing the season, the results, or the performances. The assembled press could redirect their footballing questions elsewhere. He had arrived for other reasons.
What followed was more than an hour of theatre, grievance, self-promotion, and spectacle that left Spanish and European media searching for adequate language to describe what they had witnessed.
2. "SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TO SHOOT ME"
The calls for Pérez to resign following another trophyless campaign have grown louder throughout the season. By the time he took the stage on Tuesday evening, they had become a roar. He addressed them directly.
He was not leaving. He would not be resigning. He had won 74 trophies as Real Madrid president, more than any other person to hold that office. His record, he argued, was beyond challenge. And for anyone still unclear on the matter, he offered a statement of absolute clarity.
Someone, he said, would have to shoot him to remove him from his position.
The room fell briefly silent. He moved on without elaboration.
3. "I AM A SUPERNATURAL ANIMAL. I AM A BEAST."
The question of Pérez's age — he is 79 — has been raised by critics who argue the club needs fresh leadership for its next chapter. He rejected the premise entirely. In the most direct terms available, he explained that his years have not diminished his capacity for work.
He does not feel his age. He works day and night. He described himself, with complete composure, as a supernatural animal. Then, in case that lacked sufficient emphasis, as a beast.
He did not pause for effect. He simply continued.
4. THE PHONE INCIDENT
Midway through the press conference, Pérez reached into his pocket and produced his mobile phone.
He had been, it emerged, monitoring the press coverage of the event in real time. He scrolled through headlines, pausing to read aloud those he found most objectionable. He laughed at several of them, describing the content as fake news. He singled out the Spanish newspaper ABC for particular ridicule, holding up its coverage as an example of the organised campaign of misinformation he believed was being waged against him.
Journalists in the room watched a man who had called a press conference proceed to mock the press, with his phone, in front of the press.
5. ON THE VALVERDE-TCHOUAMENI BRAWL
Reports from last week detailed a physical altercation between Federico Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni at the club's training ground. Valverde required stitches. Both players were fined 500,000 euros each following a formal club investigation. The incident had been described across European media as evidence of a dressing room in terminal breakdown.
Pérez was asked about it. He was unbothered.
Four or five teammates hit each other every season, he explained. It was perfectly normal. Valverde and Tchouameni were good kids. They were showing heart. There was no cause for concern, no deeper story, and anyone reading otherwise into the situation was mistaken.
He moved on.
6. "WHAT BARCELONA HAVE DONE IS A THEFT"
Barcelona's La Liga title, won with a 2-0 Clasico victory at Camp Nou, was — in Pérez's analysis — not legitimately earned. He invoked the Negreira case: the long-running sports corruption investigation involving Barcelona's historic payments to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, former vice president of the Spanish football refereeing committee.
The league title, Pérez said, belongs in the context of that scandal. He described it as a theft. He announced that Real Madrid had prepared a formal dossier which would be submitted to UEFA. Justice, he said, would be done.
He framed Hansi Flick's record-breaking season — 91 points, 17 home wins, back-to-back titles — not as sporting achievement but as the product of systemic corruption. Barcelona have consistently and vigorously denied the Negreira allegations.
7. "PRESENT YOURSELF AND CHALLENGE ME"
The theatrical centrepiece of the press conference was Pérez's announcement that he was bringing forward club presidential elections by three years. It was framed as democratic virtue. It was delivered as a dare.
If his opponents wanted him gone, he said, they should present themselves, stand before the membership, and try to unseat him. He knows, and everyone in the room knows, that his shadow over the Santiago Bernabéu is long enough to make that challenge functionally unanswerable. He smiled while making it.
8. ON MOURINHO: "WE ARE NOT AT THAT STAGE"
The one question that the entire footballing world had come to hear answered — whether José Mourinho would be confirmed as the new Real Madrid manager — received the shortest and least satisfying response of the evening.
Pérez said only that they were not at that stage of the process. He declined to elaborate. He moved on immediately.
Multiple reports from Tuesday morning had stated that Mourinho had already agreed personal terms with the club and that an announcement was expected imminently. Pérez neither confirmed nor denied any of it. The Mourinho chapter, for now, remains officially open.
9. THE EXIT
Pérez concluded by reflecting on his personal wealth and corporate achievements, urging supporters to get behind the players, and wishing those present in the room a good evening.
He then told them he hoped never to set eyes on them again.
He left.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS
Real Madrid are a club in institutional crisis, and their president's response to that crisis was to perform defiance so theatrical it became its own story. The sporting problems — the title drought, the dressing room collapse, the managerial vacuum, the Mbappe situation — were not addressed. They were not acknowledged. They were not even present in the room, officially.
What was present was a 79-year-old man, phone in hand, daring the world to move him.
Whether José Mourinho arrives next week to begin the rebuild, or whether the chaos deepens before it resolves, Tuesday evening at the Bernabéu will be remembered as one of the stranger hours in modern football administration. It was not a press conference. It was a performance.
And Florentino Pérez, supernatural animal that he is, gave it everything.