Ramón Calderón

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Ramón Calderón Ramos (born 26 May 1951 in Palencia, Spain) is a lawyer, and the current President of Spanish polideportivo Real Madrid.

[edit] Career

Calderon was elected President of Real in 2 July 2006, winning the elections with 8,344 votes whilst Juan Palacios was second with 8,098. After discussions with his football director, Predrag Mijatovic, Calderon hired Fabio Capello as club manager, after initially considering Bernd Schuster, then manager of Getafe. [1]

Amongst his promises when running for election, was the signing of Arjen Robben from Chelsea, Cesc Fàbregas from Arsenal and Kaká from AC Milan. Despite denials from the respective clubs, Calderón remains confident that these transfers will be succesful, downplaying the accusations of illegal approach from the clubs in question.

On 19 July 2006 he announced his first two signings, Fabio Cannavaro and Emerson Ferreira da Rosa; both signed from Juventus F.C. for an estimated €20 million.

He later signed Ruud van Nistelrooy from Manchester United and Mahamadou Diarra from Olympique Lyon. A year long loan deal was also concluded with José Antonio Reyes from Arsenal moving to Real Madrid in exchange for Júlio Baptista.

He recently completed 100 days at office.

[edit] Controversy

In January 2007 it was reported that Calderon had made defamatory comments about Real midfielder, David Beckham who had been out of favour at the Spanish club and had recently signed a deal with MLS team, L.A. Galaxy. Calderon was quoted as saying that Beckham would amount to nothing more than "an average cinema actor, working in Hollywood".

These comments, along with a seeming lack of respect for Real players and fans caused unrest at the club, resulting in him being confronted by players including Raúl.[2]