The president will fulfill his goal of making the arrival of the best player in the world coincide with the inauguration of the stadium
When Florentino Perez designed the new Santiago Bernabéu, it was clear to him that on the day of the inauguration he wanted to have a super-team and the best players in the world.
The objective has been more than achieved for a couple of years now, but the inauguration of the new stadium will have the cherry on top that Real Madrid fans have been dreaming of for seven years: Kylian Mbappe.
The circumstances, the complexity of the deal and the president’s insistence will ensure that the script is perfect and that the new Bernabéu and the best footballer in the world will coincide in good time. The inauguration of the new stadium, scheduled for this summer, will be extraordinary thanks to the presence of Kylian Mbappe.
With the French footballer set to play for Madrid, Florentino completes his biggest dream and puts Los Blancos back at the center of the soccer universe. The Bernabeu and Mbappe will give Madrid a new boost that is already being noticed at an economic level with the arrival of new sponsors at the club and new events at the stadium.
Santiago Bernabeu’s philosophy of focusing the project on the stadium and the best players in the world (Bernabéu+Di Stefano) is still very present in Florentino’s mind in this 21st century.
Mbappe’s arrival also coincides with a moment of economic solidity that has allowed the Frenchman’s signing to be completed without too many problems, making the player see that under no circumstances was the club going to bypass its strict financial rules.
The player will be the club’s highest paid employee, but without blowing up the salary scale. In this sense, Madrid can boast of having healthy finances and is projecting a future income figure unknown to any other sporting entity.
Madrid already leads the Money League since last season, as revealed by Deloitte in its latest report, which crowned Los Blancos as the leader in revenue. Real Madrid occupies first place, something it had not done since the 17-18 campaign, with revenues of 831.4 million.
Manchester City is second with 825.9 million despite reaching its record figure, and PSG climbs to third place for the first time in its history with 801.8 million. Madrid, with the arrival of Mbappe and the new stadium, expects to multiply its revenues exponentially.
One fact above all attracts the attention of sports marketing specialists: the value of the shirt. Following the signing of the agreement between Real Madrid and HP, the value of the world’s best-selling shirt is now over 200 million euros, adding together what Adidas, Emirates and now the American firm’s figure.
No other team comes close to the figure that Real Madrid earns, which receives per year amounts close to 120 million from Adidas as technical sponsor, 80 million from Fly Emirates and about 35-40 million from HP.
Florentino Perez’s best work?
The signing of Mbappe, coupled with the new stadium, puts Madrid back on top at the economic and sporting level, an objective that the president has had since his landing at the club in 2000, but which in recent years had been put in doubt due to the state-run clubs. PSG and City threatened Madrid with their million-dollar oil-based budgets, but the club has managed to reinvent itself once again by reinforcing the Bernabeu policy that Florentino has been demonstrating since day one.
That of Mbappe and the new Bernabeu is by no means Florentino Perez’s first major coup. In 2000, the current Madrid president changed the rules of the game by paying Luis Figo’s termination clause for 60 million euros.
After the Portuguese, Zidane, Ronaldo and Beckham arrived to build a galactic team that went down in history and sparked admiration all over the world, although it is true that the sporting results were not as spectacular as expected.
Florentino’s second major coup came in 2009, at the start of his second stint at Madrid. In one fell swoop, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kake, Benzema and Xabi Alonso arrived at the Bernabéu to give a boost to a team that had been slumping since 2005 and hadn’t been able to shine since the galactic Madrid.
Under Mourinho, Madrid returned to fighting for titles and the project reached the top in 2014 with the Tenth, the seed of a team that made history between 2016 and 2018 with three Champions League titles in a row.
Florentino’s third and final major coup is the signing of Mbappe, the icing on the cake of a spectacular team that boasts world stars such as Vinicius and, above all, Jude Bellingham, a player who on a sporting and marketing level is proving to be outstanding.
Madrid, moreover, has completed a renewal that seemed almost impossible after winning four European Cups in five years and now boasts a team that rules Spain with an iron fist and has an enviable future ahead of it.
Valverde, Vinicius, Rodrygo, Camavinga, Tchouameni guarantee a golden era at Madrid alongside the two jewels in the crown, Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe, the last big name Florentino Pérez was missing.