Real Madrid’s Calderon pleads his innocence – yeh right!

Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon is a lawyer. We all know that lawyers are respectable people who would never say anything that was anything but the 100% truth. A totally trustworthy bunch.

Innocent victim

Poor old Calderon has often been the innocent victim of a media vendetta trying to make him look bad when he is actually as pure as the driven snow.

He has been speaking to Sky Sports and has protested his innocence over the whole Cristiano Ronaldo affair in the Summer. Once again, the player himself, together with the media have conspired to try to make him look bad. It just isn’t fair is it?

“We have left that, it has been a very big story which we didn’t provoke. The player said he wanted to come here, a dream to come to Real Madrid and we received and we were happy to know that. After that I talked to Manchester but David Gill was very clear and said they didn’t want to sell at all. We want to have a good relation with all the big clubs in Europe and Manchester is one of the best and I like to have a good relationship with them forever, and they said for the moment no. I know the media in general to give excitement to their readers and listeners and Cristiano Ronaldo is a fantastic player and he has won the golden ball and I congratulate him on that and I wish him the best, anywhere he is going to be in the future.”

So there we have it. Calderon was made out to be a baddy when in fact he did nothing wrong at all. He only asked after the player after he himself had said he wanted to go to Real and then the rest of the mess was created by the media.

Illegal approach

Presumably the same type of thing happened to the poor President when Chelsea accused him of making an illegal approach for Arjen Robben. Oh, yes, and when Arsenal were unhappy about his alleged illegal approach for Cesc Fabregas. Would you believe it that the same thing happened again when Milan complained about his actions in relation to Kaka. How unlucky can one man be?!

Calderon has been the President at Real since July 2006 and has been a controversial figure ever since. When he won the election by just two hundred and fifty votes out of over sixteen thousand, he promised the signings of Robben, Kaka and Fabregas. That was obviously news to the clubs that they played for.

When David Beckham was struggling to get a first team place at the club and agreed a deal with LA Galaxy, Calderon was reported as saying that Beckham would become, “an average cinema actor, working in Hollywood”.

Together with other pronouncements that showed a distinct lack of respect towards the players, this comment angered many at the club and the players, led by Raul, confronted him about his attitudes.

Surpassed himself

In the Summer, whatever he may be saying now, Calderon surpassed himself with his antics in trying to seal the deal for the Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo. He seems to have forgotten that he told the world’s media that he would be signing Ronaldo.

The actions of Calderon and Real Madrid at the time led to United manager Sir Alex Ferguson speaking out,

“They think they can ride roughshod over everyone but they won’t do it with us. In terms of great clubs, Barcelona have far better morality than Real Madrid will ever have. Do you not think we have had many expressions of interest about our players from big clubs in Europe? Real Madrid are not the only club interested in Ronaldo. But the others are not saying so. They don’t get into this nonsense.”

As it turned out, Calderon met his match when he tried to take on Sir Alex and he seems to be wriggling now to try to get out of it.

Mouth watering

The Champions League group stages have set up the mouth watering possibility of the two clubs being drawn against each other in the first knockout round. Sir Alex is looking forward to a potential meeting. When asked about the prospect he replied,

“That would be a nice party wouldn’t it? I look forward to tea and biscuits with Ramon Calderon.”

I wonder if Calderon would relish the meeting quite so much?

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