Enrique Riquelme wants to be Real Madrid president. His campaign pitch: go on Spanish television, hold up an Erling Haaland shirt, and tell the world the Norwegian striker has a release clause and is ready to come to the Bernabéu. Manchester City's response arrived quickly — and it did not come from the press office alone.
Riquelme, a candidate in the Real Madrid presidential election, appeared on Spanish TV and made the kind of promise that plays well in a campaign but tends to land badly in a boardroom. He unveiled a Haaland shirt, claimed the striker has a release clause in his Manchester City contract, and suggested Haaland wants the move. It was bold. It was visual. It was exactly the sort of thing that gets clipped and shared.
City were not sharing it approvingly.
According to Sky Sports, ESPN and the BBC, Manchester City have issued a statement dismissing Riquelme's claims and warning of potential legal consequences. The club's language was unusually direct — this was not a polite "we don't comment on speculation" brush-off. City appear to be pushing back hard on the suggestion that any release clause exists or is being activated, and they want that on the record.
Whether formal proceedings follow is unclear. Legal threats in football are often the loudest part of a dispute that quietly goes nowhere. But the fact City escalated to this language at all tells you something about how seriously they are taking the reputational dimension.
Here is where it gets genuinely interesting. The existence and precise terms of any release clause in Haaland's City deal have not been independently verified — by Flagside or, as far as can be established, by any outlet reporting this story. City's denial implies no such arrangement is in play. Riquelme says otherwise. Neither side has published the contract.
Haaland has been at the Etihad since 2022 and has been, on his day, the most destructive centre-forward in European football. The idea that Real Madrid would want him is not remotely surprising. The idea that a presidential candidate would use him as a campaign prop — without, apparently, any coordination with the player or his club — is the part that has forced City's hand.
Riquelme is challenging Florentino Perez, who has held the Real Madrid presidency for most of the last two decades and is not known for losing elections. Whether Riquelme poses a genuine threat to Perez's position is an open question. What is not open is that his Haaland gambit has handed City a platform to publicly reinforce that their striker is not available — and to do so with legal weight behind it.
Using a world-class player as an election prop, without his consent or his club's cooperation, is a strange kind of politics. Riquelme got his clip. City got their statement. Haaland, somewhere in all of this, got used as a prop in someone else's campaign — and presumably had very little to say about it.
Enrique Riquelme wants to be Real Madrid president. His campaign pitch: go on Spanish television, hold up an Erling Haaland shirt, and tell the world the Norwegian striker has a release clause and is ready to come to the…
Fontes
Sky Sports — Football, ESPN FC, CaughtOffside, FootballJOE, BBC Sport — Football
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