Ramón Calderón has justified my faith in USA Today by resigning from the presidency of Real Madrid—a bit anticlimactically, given the rumors of a frantic last-minute power play and the threat of a mass walkout by the board if he tried to stay. Marca is saying that the board forced the resignation, but it seems to have been a fairly straightforward process.
It just goes to show that when you alienate your openly propagandistic de facto club newspaper to the point that it starts printing photographic evidence of your corruption even though the club won multiple titles during your regime, your goose is more or less cooked.
The club's vice-president, Vicente Boluda, will succeed Calderón on an interim basis. New elections will probably be called for this summer. The Florentino Pérez comeback train is rolling. The eyelashes of central Spain show no sign of ceasing to flutter in Cristiano Ronaldo's direction. Alex Ferguson will keep his Gatling gun trained on the empty seat.
Gonzalo's wonderful recap of Calderon's greatest hits has just reminded me of his fantastic rant back in 2007 in which he managed to offend all the fans and the entire squad. Possibly my favourite Calderon moment.
Thanks Linda, happy to bring a smile to a culé's face…
Frankly, the sooner the interim administration announces a timetable for new elections, the better. Otherwise Real Madrid are heading for an even more rocky few months.
Seriously speaking, though, putting myself in the position of a Madridista I don't know if I would have wanted him to resign now. Surely the instability caused by him going is going to be a big problem, regardless of all his mistakes and wrongdoing. (This was my argument against getting rid of Laporta during the off-season too.)
On the other hand, I guess he just couldn't keep clinging on, given the fact that there were clearly power forces waging all out war against him.
He had to resign. Can you imagine stories in the press day after day, people crawling out of the woodwork to sell their stories about Calderón.
The club faces serious instability until the next elections, and even then nothing is certain, because if they are not clear and transparent (as the last lot were not) then Real Madrid will be paying the price for years to come…