Sid Lowe's blog on The Guardian website ripping him (and Marca) to shreds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/jan/19/roman-calderon-real-madrid-marca
Bloody hell, I knew he was a plank but some of that is unreal!
I forgot about the Nicolas Cage incident as well, snyuk snyuk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/jan/19/roman-calderon-real-madrid-marca
Ramón Calderón once claimed that his headstone would read: "Here lies the president who didn't sign Kaka." He may even have been right when he said it. After all, "Here lies the president who didn't sign Kaka, Cesc Fábregas, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Villa or even Santi Cazorla – here lies the paranoid president who forgot Antonio Cassano's services to snackery to accuse him of doing 'nothing' in Madrid except 'foment prostitution' and 'increase the birth rate' and who revealed Iker Casillas's wages, called Guti the 'eternal promise' and David Beckham 'half an actor bound for Hollywood' – then railed against the 'scum' journalist who broadcast his remarks because they were part of a 'private conversation' delivered, via microphone, to 150 journalism students," would never fit.
As for "Here lies the president who did all that, who won power amid a voting scandal, spent €293m, got detained by US immigration and conned by 'Nicolas Cage', claimed to be 'a normal middle-class Spaniard' from his €6m Moraleja mansion, said only little clubs cry about refs and cried about the refs, was finally undone after the paper for whom investigative journalism normally means investigating whether Real Madrid are great or really great revealed that his collaborators rigged the AGM, said he'd never resign because 'only cowards and those with something to hide resign' and then resigned" – well, forget that one too.
Forget a headstone, you'd struggle to fit Calderón's epitaph on a cliff face. You could, though, probably sum him up on a pebble. "Worst. President. Ever."
So it's no surprise that, far from tearfully laying flowers, most people are dancing on his grave – even if he did win two league titles; even if it was votes for opponents Juan Palacios and Juan Miguel Villa Mir that the judge deemed inadmissible; even if there's no proof he actually knew about the AGM swindle; even if allegations about a dodgy credit card bill and shifty tax return were as convincing as one of his promises – the latter a clumsy cut-and-paste job that appeared to have been carried out by El Mundo's resident five-year-old. Even if he did all that, his presidential demise has satisfied virtually everyone, even his erstwhile partners, and that's part of the point.
The fans are satisfied, the media are satisfied, the players are satisfied and the assorted sharks sizing up the presidential chair, leaning back, tapping their fingers and muttering "excellent" as they prepare their €60m deposit to stand – which is a nice way of keeping those filthy oiks away from the presidency and making sure only the filthy rich can run, because they are so much more trustworthy– are certainly satisfied.
Most of all, though, Marca is satisfied. Which might sound weird coming from the newspaper that employs Roberto Gómez, the cringeworthy columnist that declared Calderón the "Kennedy of presidents" and wrote he bowed down with a "gentlemanliness never before seen in football". But it's not actually that weird at all. Marca have got exactly what they wanted – a fantastic story, one they've modestly likened to Watergate, Calderón out, presidential elections in the summer, at which their candidate is clear, and a new man in the brilliantly named Vicente Boluda ("prick" in Argentine Spanish).
With his thick neck, blazer, brogues and hair slicked into bunchy bits at the back, Boluda may look like the typical bruising billionaire but is, Marca fawningly insists, the man who has "brought a breath of fresh air to the club". He may be a Valencia fan and Atlético Madrid season-ticket holder – enough to hang one of the AGM 10 – but that's OK because Real Madrid come first and he's a man of "honour", whose "calmness is frightening", a "real football fan" who "knows what he's talking about". He may have already given interviews, publicly visited his players and promised to invite the King to a game, but he's "wonderfully discreet".
In fact he's so down to earth that – get this – he will still go to the market every Saturday! Apparently that is his "only vice" alongside football and bullfighting. Better still, he won't stand for president but wouldn't mind serving under someone else and, as Marca's cover screams, he reckons Florentino Pérez's presidency was "magnificent". In the meantime he's brought "harmony" back to the club. Real Madrid is sorted.
Only it's not, not really. After all, although Juande Ramos has stabilised the side, Barcelona are still 12 points clear following a 5-0 demolition of Deportivo that saw them reach the halfway stage of the season with a record 50 points and 59 goals. The arrogance, politicking and narrow-mindedness that has afflicted what should be a fantastic institution remains, along with the media sycophancy that accompanies it; Marca's sting not so much representing a change in style as a change in sides.
The shambolic system of postal voting is still easily manipulated, the show-of-hands AGM vote easier yet. And even if Boluda maybe deserves the benefit of the doubt, he was Calderón' s vice-president. That's the Calderón the press have called "crook", "criminal" and "corrupt". The only man to have departed. The board is Calderón's board, the advisers are his advisers and the sporting director – the person ultimately responsible for signing Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Lassana Diarra for a tournament only one of them can play, the man accused by a former secretary of inflating commissions – is his sporting director.
That's Pedja Mijatovic, the same sporting director who went down to the referee Pérez Burrull's dressing room last night. His visit came just before a dreadful Madrid, supported by the Ultras who spat on an Osasuna player who was down, chanted about the gas chamber and performed fascist salutes, beat bottom-placed Osasuna 3-1 thanks to a goalkeeper who can't catch and a referee who not only failed to give Osasuna two penalties but sent off Juanfran for being the victim of them and told a player "You can stick your telly up your arse" when he suggested that replays would prove he was wrong. After two and half years of secrets and lies, tears and accusations, hidden cameras and planted microphones, sackings, back-stabbings and scapegoating, broken promises and hideous mistakes, it could have gone down as just another scandal at the Santiago Bernabéu, but for one thing: this time no one could blame Ramón Calderón.
Bloody hell, I knew he was a plank but some of that is unreal!
I forgot about the Nicolas Cage incident as well, snyuk snyuk.
