Florentino Perez returns unopposed as Real Madrid's president

MADRID: Florentino Perez will continue as President of Real Madrid until 2025, it was confirmed on Tuesday.

Perez will remain in the post he has occupied since 2000, (with a three-year break in the middle between 2006-2009) after nobody presented a candidacy to oppose him after he called elections.

It is the fourth time the 74-year-old Perez has run unopposed as there was no opposition when he returned in 2009.

One reason for this is that in 2012 Perez made it more difficult for anyone to run against him by changing the conditions necessary to be a candidate so that any potential rivals had to have been a Real Madrid club member for at least 20 years while presenting a deposit of 15 percent of the club's annual budget (somewhere over 120 million euros), Xinhua reports.

This effectively means only someone who is rich can now afford to oppose him, limiting the number of possible rivals at a stroke.

Partly as a result of this change in the club's statutes, nobody was able to run against Perez in 2013 or 2017 and he now continues as President while once again failing to face a challenge.

The construction magnate's main challenges now are to oversee the ongoing remodelling work at Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, (which will continue until autumn 2022), while attempting to renew the contracts of players such as Luka Modric and Sergio Ramos.

The club is also expected to make big signings this summer with strikers Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland among the club's main targets.