Real president under pressure over rigged assembly claims

Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon was facing a serious challenge to his survival at the helm of Spain’s most successful club on Thursday due to allegations that he rigged last month’s annual general assembly.

The scandal threatens to rattle the squad, which has made noticeable improvements this year under new coach Juande Ramos after a poor start to the season which was marked by a wave of injuries to key players.

Late on Wednesday Calderon, whose mandate expires in 2010, said he had fired two of his close aides over the affair but he rejected calls that he step down, saying he had done nothing wrong.

“QuiTting is for cowards. Leaving would not fix anything, it would leave a void and force the club to call elections,” the 57-year-old lawyer told a news conference.

Sports daily Marca alleged Tuesday that he stacked a December 7 annual general assembly with fake delegates to get the club’s annual accounts and electoral assembly members approved by a slim margin.

The next day it published a photograph on its front page taken at the assembly with a yellow circle around the heads of ten delegates who it says had voted even though they were not authorized to do so.

The daily published a new picture on Thursday to back its claim that Calderon knew personally some of the unauthorised persons who voted at the assembly, a charge the Real president denied a day earlier at the news conference.

In an editorial, daily newspaper El Mundo called for Calderon’s “immediate” resignation in order to “turn the page on one of the most deplorable chapters” in the history of the club, which it said symbolizes Spain around the world.

Calderon said late on Tuesday in a radio interview that he will probably not stand for re-election when his four-year mandate ends in 2010 and sports daily AS, which is close to Real, said he will probably try to save his head until the end of the season before calling elections over the summer.

He has come out of favour with many Real supporters due to his failure to fulfill promises to bring Manchester United’s Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo and AC Milan’s Brazilian playmaker Kaka to the Spanish giants.

The crisis over the general assembly comes as Real has started to close the gap with its arch rivals Barcelona since Ramos was made coach in December and are preparing to face Liverpool in the Champions League knockout stages in February and March.

While the defending Spanish champions are in second place, they still trail the Catalan side in the Spanish league by 12 points.

Defender Javia Garcia said the players had not been affected by the controversy.

“I’ll be honest and will not lie. Nothing has been discussed in the locker room. We keep out of all that,” he told reporters on Thursday when asked if the issue had been discussed in the dressing room.

Spanish media have tipped Florentino Perez, the man who was Real’s president during its “Galacticos” phase when it recruited top players like England’s David Beckham and Portugal’s Luis Figo, as a possible replacement for Calderon.

Real Madrid were the world’s largest revenue-generating club for the third successive season in the 2006/07 season, according to an annual ranking compiled by business advisory firm Deloitte.

The reigning Spanish champions overtook Manchester United as the biggest football club by revenue in the 2004/05 season after a policy of signing big led to a surge in sales of replica shirts and other items.