Will Slattery

Richard Fitzpatrick on the way.

Thanks, fellas.

Now, as promised, Richard Fitzpatrick is with us, football writer.

Books include El Clasico, Barcelona versus Real Madrid, football's greatest rivalry.

And then more recently, HH, Helino Herrera, football's original master of the dark arts.

Richard, you're very welcome.

Good to talk to you.

Thanks for having me on, Joe.

Florentino Perez.

So I think we're all pretty familiar with Florentino at this stage.

His 2006 stint at Madrid was the Galactico era.

And then he went away for three years and he's been back since 09.

And as we know, it's been an extraordinary period of success at Real Madrid.

However, this season will now make it two years running without a major trophy.

And he called a press conference at short notice, which is unusual.

I mean, people maybe thought, is it a new managerial announcement?

But generally that's done by statement.

I was reading as opposed to a Florentino Perez press conference.

And it certainly wasn't that he didn't really want to discuss sporting matters.

He launched for kind of Trumpian in a way, a 90 minute borderline soliloquy defense of himself, of his health at 79.