Pérez faces the first election for Real Madrid leadership in 20 years

In this file photo, Real Madrid President Florentino Perez reacts before a La Liga soccer match between Real Madrid and Athletic in Madrid, Spain. (AP)

BARCELONA, Spain, June 6 (AP): For the first time in 20 years, Florentino Pérez's Real Madrid reign will be challenged at the ballot box.

The world’s most valuable and most successful soccer club will hold elections on Sunday.

Pérez, the 79-year-old executive who for the past two-and-a-half-decades has made Madrid the global powerhouse to beat, will face an upstart rival half his age who is making big promises to convince the club's 98,000 members to consider a change.

Enrique Riquelme, 37, was still a boy when Pérez first took over. He remained unknown to most Madrid fans until he stepped forward as a rival candidate after the incumbent called early elections last month in a press conference dominated by Pérez's claims that the Spanish media is trying to "kill” his presidency.

"Why do they want to kill me?" an agitated Pérez told reporters on May 12. "Why? Because there are some kids out there saying they want to run? Well, let them. I would love them to.”

Riquelme, a renewable energy executive, has surprisingly been able to mount a credible threat. That's thanks to the backing of former Madrid players like Raúl González and promising huge, and arguably far-fetched, signings like that of Manchester City star Erling Haaland.

Riquelme got a big boost when Madrid great Raúl, its record holder for games played, former goalkeeper Iker Casillas, and ex-defender Fernando Hierro joined his campaign.

Raúl would be Riquelme’s sports director, a role that doesn’t exist now, while Hierro would oversee its youth academy. Casillas’s exact role was not defined.

Riquelme also said he wanted to sign Spain midfielder Rodri, who has one year left on his contract with City.

But Riquelme’s big lure dangled to voters this week- his claim that "Haaland wants to come to Madrid,” prompted City to dismiss any chance of negotiating for the sale of its top-scoring striker, who is under contract until 2034.

That didn’t stop Riquelme from going on Spain’s state broadcaster TVE and doubling down on his pledge.

"If I am made president of Real Madrid on Sunday, Haaland will play for Real Madrid,” he said on Thursday.

Then it was the turn of Haaland's entourage to shoot it down.

"All very entertaining but not true. We wish all the best for both candidates in the Madrid elections,” Haaland’s agent, Rafaela Pimenta, told the AP in a short statement on Friday.

"It must be a bluff,” was Pérez's opinion.

Not to be outdone, Pérez said Thursday that next week - after the election - he would announce the "most expensive transfer in the history of Real Madrid," worth, he said, at least 150 million euros ($173 million).

He knows a thing or two about promising apparently impossible signings - and then making them come true. He won his first election in 2000 when he swore he would sign then-Barcelona forward Luis Figo. And that he did.