"After telling them so many times they were the best in the world, they ended up confused." Florentino Pérez said it himself on his way out the door — and it was the most honest thing anyone at Real Madrid had said in years.
On February 27, 2006, Pérez resigned as Real Madrid president mid-Champions League tie against Arsenal. Not after it. During it. Thierry Henry had already silenced the Bernabéu with a 1-0 winner in the first leg. Then came a 2-1 league defeat away at Mallorca. That was the one that broke him.
The moment that said everything
The Mallorca match isn't remembered for the result. It's remembered for what happened when Sergio Ramos scored. His own teammates barely reacted. Ramos described it himself on Cadena SER: "When I scored, it felt like Mallorca had scored instead of me."
Pérez used that exact moment in his resignation speech. A president citing a goal celebration — or the absence of one — as evidence his dressing room was fractured beyond repair. That tells you how far things had fallen.
The squad Pérez had assembled — Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Figo, Roberto Carlos — had become a collection of individuals, not a team. Three seasons without a major trophy. A rotating cast of managers: Queiroz, Camacho, García Remón, Luxemburgo, and eventually reserve-team coach López Caro. The Galácticos model, built on global stars and commercial dominance, had produced a financial turnaround — Deloitte ranked Madrid the world's richest club in 2006 — while delivering almost nothing on the pitch.
A resignation speech unlike any other
Pérez didn't hide behind the usual presidential language. He called the players egocentric and selfish. He admitted he had "spoiled" them. Then, unusually for someone in his position, he turned it on himself.
"I have not known how to guide them. I take the blame."
"I am a blockage that needed to be removed."
He proposed Fernando Martín, then vice president, as interim successor. That lasted weeks before Martín also resigned, leaving the club in further institutional chaos until Ramón Calderón scraped a presidential election win with just 29.81 percent of the vote.
On the pitch, Real Madrid's Champions League exit was confirmed when the second leg at Highbury ended 0-0 — Raúl hit the post and missed the rebound, Jens Lehmann made a brilliant save, and that was that. Zidane never played in European competition again. The Galácticos era was over.
Pérez would return to the presidency in 2009 and build something entirely different. But the 2006 exit remains the starkest example of what happens when a football project mistakes star power for team identity — and a president who finally admitted it, in public, with no way back.
