Real Madrid has done things so damn wrong this season that it will be forced, as divine punishment, to receive the final penance before it ends: either give a guard of honor to Barça or the possibility that the Culers celebrate the League title in their face. It's choosing between a scare or death, basically. A "hit me with a truck!" in all its glory.

Real Madrid projects an image of financial solidity that aligns with its results-based sporting DNA. However, if a detailed reading is made of the latest audited economic snapshot – at the midpoint of the 2025-26 financial year –, cracks are observed that call this narrative into question. Without denying its power as a global brand, on par with other football giants like Barça itself, PSG, or the Premier League titans, the institution led by Florentino Pérez has made available to its members documentation of 112 pages that raises some alarms.According to this latest update, the club presents a total liability of 1,780 million euros if the debt associated with the renovation of the Santiago Bernabéu is included, a stadium that is not yet finished and has requested three credit extensions so far. This is a significant magnitude that conditions Madrid's financial structure, although in comparison to Barça, which exceeds 2,500 million euros if ordinary gross debt and the credit operation to renovate the Camp Nou are added together, the absolute figure is lower than that of the Blaugrana.

Goals were falling at the Alfredo Di Stéfano stadium. In the end, there were six. Six blows to Madrid's morale, six blows to their blossoming line, six death knells for a project that isn't taking off. Years go by and Real Madrid cannot harm Barça Femení. Sometimes it seems to be getting close, but an important match arrives and we see the result. And what was the reaction of the white fans? Nothing. The four indignant ones on social media, who are usually those who live permanently indignant, and little else. No scolding, no whistling, no great dramas.

Real Madrid will go to trial over the concerts at the Bernabéu stadium. This decision was reached by the judge, who has concluded the investigation and believes the club may have committed an alleged environmental crime. This ruling sides with the residents near the stadium, representing another blow to president Florentino Pérez, the driving force behind a renovation that is becoming a breeding ground for problems. Mónica Aguirre de la Cuesta, head of Madrid's Court of Instruction Number 53, signed an order on January 15th, closing a case that has lasted a year and a half. The judge sees evidence of an environmental crime, specifically pollution, and identifies José Ángel Sánchez (JAS), the general manager of Real Madrid and Real Madrid Estadio, the club's subsidiary created to organize these events, as responsible. Therefore, Florentino will not have to sit in the dock, but the trial is another torpedo below the waterline of his reputation, at a time when the Real Madrid president is in the process of converting the club into a public limited sports company to pay off the debts it has accumulated.

Real Madrid wins with a penalty, momentarily closing the gap on Barcelona, but their performance is far from convincing (2-0). The Bernabéu has delivered its verdict after the elimination from the Copa del Rey at the hands of Albacete (3-2)The dismissal of Xabi Alonso, combined with Álvaro Arbeloa's first match – which failed to impress – has provoked a reaction from Real Madrid fans, who have targeted Vinícius, Bellingham, and the new manager with constant whistles every time they touched the ball or appeared on the video screens. In the opening minutes of the match against Levante, the Bernabéu crowd chanted slogans directed at the presidential box and waved white handkerchiefs, calling for the president's resignation. This is not the only act of protest seen recently in Madrid, as several banners against Florentino Pérez have appeared in the city in the last few hours. "Super League, parking, stadium... From failure to failure, a finished president," one of these posters read..

It's revealing that in most journalistic analyses of Real Madrid's crisis, one name is conspicuously absent: Florentino Pérez. After the debacle in Albacete in Álvaro Arbeloa's debut—Arbeloa, a proud Mourinho loyalist whose main merit is being liked by the president—and coinciding with errors in match planning (not including Bellingham and Tchouameni in the squad) and in the substitutions he made during the game, the general opinion is that the blame cannot be placed on a newly arrived coach who has enough on his plate just saying yes to Florentino and not upsetting the team's stars.

In football, when things aren't working, the first to be blamed is the manager. And if the situation doesn't improve, the fans start looking at the board. At Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez seems to have everything under control. Twenty-three years in the position, absolute power, and seven European Cups give him a certain degree of leeway. But in recent years, his tenure has had more lows than highs.

In 2025, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona end up entrenched in their own trenches, attacking each other. Nothing new, really. They use social media and any journalists willing to join in to hurl barbs, trying to convince fans that the rival always benefits from refereeing decisions. They dredge up old footage, analyze forgotten matches—whatever it takes to make it clear that they won titles competing against an opponent who enjoyed preferential treatment. Some use the Negreira case as a weapon, others dig up archives and statistics.

Hearing Florentino Pérez claim that "the Negreira case is the biggest scandal in football history" is infuriating. You have to have a short memory, act in bad faith, or know very little about football to say something so foolish. In world football, clubs like Juventus and AC Milan have been relegated to the Second Division for sporting offenses, teams controlled by mafia groups have been discovered, people have been murdered, and we've seen dictatorships with blood on their hands organize tournaments and manage clubs as if nothing were wrong. Dictatorships with which Florentino profits.

The figures for the 2024-2025 financial year presented by Real Madrid shine, at first glance, like a freshly cleaned ceramic hob. The club, chaired by Florentino Pérez, closed the year with €1.185 billion in revenue, €24 million in profit, and a net worth of €598 million. Barça, on the other hand, closed the year with 994 million in revenue.17 million in losses and a negative net worth of 153 million. But, if you scratch the surface of Real Madrid's finances, you can find traces of dried-up oil, just like at Barcelona.

One of the few moments that broke the monotony from 11 am of the recent assembly It was when Joan Laporta called "scholars" and "mestretites" to critics around Barça while talking about preserving the club's ownership model. "The board I chair is the guarantor that Barça belongs to its members. Perhaps we are the only guarantors. Those who say that Barça is a company, those scholars, those mestretites that give lessons, alert and far away," Laporta said to the delegate members while raising his voice. But the same week, the club's treasurer, Ferran Olivé, had said that Goldman Sachs, the investment fund backing the financing of Espai Barça, was the one who chose Limak as the construction company for the remodeling of the Camp Nou.

The Madrid High Court (TSJM) ruled in favor of the residents of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium and on Monday approved the annulment of the controversial concession for the two parking lots Real Madrid wanted to build on Paseo de la Castellana and Calle del Padre Damián, next to the stadium. Specifically, it rejected the appeals filed by the club led by Florentino Pérez, the developer and manager of this project, and by Madrid City Council, the government that bid for the infrastructure.

I just looked at myself again Sergio Ramos's video clip of the song [sic] of heartbreak that just published, called Cybele. Apparently, he doesn't dedicate it to any woman who broke his heart, but to Florentino Pérez, who is the one who made him "fly." Some considerations:

In the midst of the hangover of the Lamine Yamal's 18th birthday party, Barça started preseason on Sunday. Hansi Flick is happy because many of his players are fit. have done physical work during the holidays and you won't have to push them as hard as last year before getting into the nitty-gritty. You'll also be happy to know New talents from La Masia like Jofre Torrents or Juan Hernández, unafraid to promote them to the first team if they earn it on the pitch. The German gives opportunities to youngsters out of conviction, but also out of necessity, as the economy taints everything. The hottest player is in the kitchen sink with the reinforcement the team needs for the attack, in which the coaches only have four players for three positions. And even Joan Garcia, the only new face the club has announced for next season, is not registered because of the burden of the club. fair play financial, still unresolved.

After Real Madrid drew in their Club World Cup opener against Al Hilal at noon in Miami in 30-degree heat and 70% humidity, Florentino Pérez struck his usual evangelical note, declaring: "We've finally achieved something we've been fighting for for a long time. Plus, with the game being free, all children around the world can watch Real Madrid today. It's a great joy for us, as we've fought hard to make it possible for everyone to see it."

Real Madrid's good performance in the second half of this Saturday's Cup final cannot, should not, cover up, the club's lamentable image before and several players later. It cannot be that an entity that boasts of lordship, honor, and greatness has become a madhouse with symptoms of paranoia. Everyone is after them: UEFA, FIFA, the referees, Tebas, Louzán, the media, and even the Bernabéu residents. It's a deranged, hypersensitive, and often hooligan Madrid that sees ghosts everywhere and provokes embarrassment, not to say shame.

There was a time when banks had powerful industrial portfolios. An example was Banesto, when Mario Conde was its chairman, which was swallowed up by Santander; or BBVA itself, which had been one of the key shareholders of Telefónica and Gamesa (now part of the Siemens group). When it was a savings bank, La Caixa was—and still is in some cases—the key partner in companies such as Gas Natural (now Naturgy), Agbar, Abertis, and Repsol, and it maintained this vocation, which was frowned upon by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Spain.

It's very likely that most viewers who watch Real Madrid matches on television think that the renovations to the Santiago Bernabéu are already complete. The reality is that, six years after the renovation began, There are still workers working in the bowels of the Madrid stadium.. What the cameras don't show are the tarps covering the pending work that many attendees must cross to access their seats, in addition to the temporary fences and signs that exist on the streets that border them. Florentino Pérez, the club's plenipotentiary president, had set the summer of 2025 as the date for the inauguration of the new Bernabéu, but a new calculation error will prevent it.

Real Madrid, who play the second leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie against Atlético Madrid this Wednesday with a minimal advantage from the first leg (9 p.m.), have presented their profit and loss accounts for the period from July 1 to December 31 of last year. A month before this period, the club formalized the signing of Kylian Mbappé. According to the report, the high-profile acquisition of the Frenchman as a free agent meant Madrid spent significant bonuses and salaries to secure the former Paris Saint-Germain striker.

Sunday is visiting day in Cobán prison, capital of the Alta Verapaz department of Guatemala. In the center of the city is the penitentiary where political prisoner Bernardo Caal awaits us. He has been incarcerated for two years for defending the Oxec River from a mega hydroelectric project called Oxec SA. Sentenced to seven years and four months in prison, he gives us two hours of his visiting time for the interview. His wife has made an eight-hour bus trip to bring him food. She says she has to cook twice as much so that the officials keep half of what she brings him. After going through a very strict search and entering the director's room with only a camera, notebook and pen, a voice is heard shouting: "Caal Xol, Caal Xol!". "Thanks for coming"he tells us, as they remove his handcuffs.