The 77-year-old construction tycoon who built football’s greatest dynasty

Since its inception as the European Cup in 1955, Real has won the competition more than any other team in the world. But that’s not exactly what Pérez wanted to point out. He was there to show them a small silver ball, bestowed by FIFA, recognising Real Madrid as its Club of the 20th Century.

“Everyone else is fighting for these,” Pérez said, waving toward the Champions League trophies, before pointing at the FIFA prize. “Real Madrid is fighting for this. We want the next one of these.”

Pérez, who has spent 21 years of his life running the most grandiloquent team in sports, may have to wait a while for Real to become the club of the 21st century. But it’s off to a pretty good start. On Saturday, Pérez hopes that Real will bring home the Champions League trophy for a 15th time by beating Borussia Dortmund at London’s Wembley Stadium.

A victory would stretch the gap between Real and every other club on the continent, since no one else has been crowned European champion more than seven times. But it would also underline Pérez’s own status as one of the most successful owners or executives in the history of sports. As the architect of Real Madrid’s modern success, he alone has already overseen six of the club’s 14 European triumphs, including four in the past eight seasons.

“This team,” Pérez told Real’s general assembly in November, “will never tire of winning.”

What has changed is Pérez’s approach to building that winner. When he first won the club’s presidency, back in 2000, he earned the votes of Real Madrid’s members by pledging to spend mountains of cash to bring in superstars. All that mattered was the size of his promises and the depth of his war chest.

A construction magnate and lifelong Real Madrid supporter, Pérez was swept into office and ushered in the era of the Galacticos. He signed the likes of Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, the Brazilian Ronaldo, and David Beckham in the pursuit of European glory. But that stretch delivered only one Champions League trophy. When he left office in 2006, the Galacticos were deemed an expensive failure.

Still, Pérez couldn’t stay away. He was re-elected in 2009 by promising to sign one of the biggest stars ever to kick a soccer ball, Cristiano Ronaldo. For the next nine years, Pérez surrounded Ronaldo with world-beating talent and Ronaldo returned the favour with four European titles.

Only when Ronaldo left, in 2018, did Pérez begin to change his thinking. Real Madrid’s balance sheet didn’t leave him much choice.

Despite posting some of the highest revenues in global soccer, Pérez sensed a crisis brewing. He’d spent a fortune paying Ronaldo for nearly a decade. He was in a fight with the Spanish league about television rights payments, which couldn’t match the gold rush in the English Premier League. And Madrid’s stadium needed a revamp. The trouble only deepened during the pandemic as revenues fell off a cliff.

That’s when Pérez turned himself into one of the biggest agitators in sports. He was the driving force behind the move for a European Super League, which would rival the Champions League and generate more matches for the continent’s elite—along with more television revenue. The initial plan failed spectacularly in 2021 under pressure from fans and politicians, who viewed him as soccer’s equivalent of a Bond villain, but the idea hasn’t gone away. Pérez insists that fans want more heavyweight clashes all of the time, that too much of a good thing simply doesn’t exist.

“If UEFA organised tennis we would hardly have seen matches between Nadal and Federer,” Pérez said in 2022, referring to European soccer’s governing body.

Just as remarkable was the transformation Pérez pulled off within his own club. The years after losing Ronaldo were supposed to be a leaner, more austere spell. The stadium renovations alone would cost over $1 billion.

Yet the man who assembled the Galacticos became convinced he could build around budding talents instead of established stars. Two of its top scorers in recent seasons, the Brazilian pair of Vinicius, Jr. and Rodrygo, landed in Madrid as 18-year-olds for less than a combined $100 million. Even the more expensive players, such as the $110 million English sensation Jude Bellingham or the $86 million French midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni arrived long before turning 23, rather than in their prime.

Whether or not they fit into a specific playing style was a secondary concern to Pérez. In an era where most elite clubs refuse to compromise on a clear tactical identity, such as the total possession game of Manchester City or the relentless pressing of Liverpool, Perez cares only about results. Never mind if Real has to play backs-to-the-wall in a Champions League semi-final, so long as it wins.

For that, Pérez has the ideal coach in Carlo Ancelotti, a 64-year-old Italian regarded as a specialist in adapting to his available personnel.

“The mistake that the new generation of coaches make is giving too much information to the players in the game with the ball. This takes away creativity,” Ancelotti says. “If a team does not have a clear identity, it is not a limit. It is a quality.”

None of which is to say that Pérez remains completely immune to the lure of a true Galactico. Win or lose on Saturday, Real Madrid has another prize lined up for this summer in the form of a French superstar free agent who grew up idolising Pérez’s handiwork.

His name is Kylian Mbappé.

-- The Wall Street Journal