More Florentino Perez audio recordings have been leaked – and this time Manchester United’s Juan Mata is going to have a bone to pick.
Comments from the Real Madrid president a decade-plus ago have been filtering out over the past few days, and none of them have reflected particularly well on a man whose PR is in an all-time slump following the European Super League fiasco.
Unfortunately for Perez, more audio recordings have been leaked to Spanish outlet El Confidencial – which is rather ironic, because there’s no doubt he would have preferred they stayed exactly that, confidential.
In this case, they reference Juan Mata upon his release from Real Madrid back in 2007.
El Confidencial (subscription required) quote Perez, who is accused of bad-mouthing club legend Michel over his poor management and treatment of the now Manchester United midfielder:
“Michel is a very bad coach. A guy who has done nothing. It has left us almost in the descent to Madrid. Man, that’s a scammer but De La Morena protects him, he has put him there.”
“But he is not a coach. You cannot train in the Second Division when in Second B [RE: Michel’s difficult stint at Rayo Vallecano] you have done very badly.”
“If you want to be a coach by profession, you have to go little by little. Look at [Bernd] Schuster. I am convinced that Schuster will be a good coach.”
“Because it started at Jerez, then at Levante, I don’t know what and I’ve heard him say one thing: ‘I’m not ready to coach Real Madrid’ And what a pleasure to hear that!”
“And that’s why Schuster will be a good coach. Now, a guy who says: ‘No, I’m Michel and I have to coach Real Madrid because I am Michel … where does that come from?”
“I think that Michel is the one who makes the hole for Mata, he is the one who throws him so that his son can play. Come on, that’s how it is.”
Perez clearly had a bee in his bonnet over Michel, who left the club the same year as Mata, and currently managers La Liga outfit Getafe, with Schuster out of work since leaving Dalian Yifang in 2019.
Mata has gone on to enjoy quite the career, having developed into a player certainly good enough to play for Real Madrid, were he not booted out to accommodate his manager’s son.
We’re thoroughly enjoying this Florentino Perez soap opera, though. We’ll be keeping our fingers tightly crossed that there’s more audio recordings to come in due course.
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