Like Figo and Beckham, Riquelme's Haaland promise ...
Key takeaways
- But it was also stealing a leaf directly out of the Florentino Perez Election Playbook.
- Perhaps you recall: it was a chapter in time which transfixed world football, broke a transfer record and kickstarted an even more venomous relationship between Madrid and Barcelona.
- So here -- in case you're too young to have been glued to the soap opera that was the Spanish football market over a quarter of a century ago -- is what happened; the seismic move which Riquelme's decided to piggyback.
Why this matters: a sports story that could shift standings, legacies, or fan conversations.
But it was also stealing a leaf directly out of the Florentino Perez Election Playbook.
Riquelme followed up, live on TV, by saying: "If I fail to fulfil either of these promises then here's a notarised document where I guarantee I'll pay the season tickets of the 100,000 Madrid socios [members] for the following season."
It's an extraordinarily bullish move -- and has seen Manchester City insist in a statement on Thursday about Haaland that "there is no chance of this happening and there is no contractual clause to enable it" while also threatening legal action for "the use of our player image in this context" -- but it harks back to precisely how the reign of the man he's trying to unseat, Perez, began in 2000.