Enrique Riquelme is weighing Raúl González Blanco for a senior Real Madrid post if he wins the presidency on Sunday, a move that would put one of the club’s most familiar names back at the center of power. The plan being discussed is to make Raúl sporting director, returning him to a first-line role in Spanish football after a year away from the Castilla bench.
That is why Rodri is coming up in Madrid conversations again: the vote is immediate, the job on the table is real, and the timing is tied to a single result that could reshape the club’s football structure. Raúl left the reserve team in 2025 after six seasons in charge and has since worked as an institutional ambassador for LaLiga, a quieter role than the one now being linked to him.
The appeal is obvious. Raúl has already been inside Real Madrid’s structure, he knows the club from the inside, and his name still carries weight in a dressing room and boardroom that have never been far apart. If Riquelme wins, the former forward would not be returning as a symbol alone but as the chosen candidate to help run the sporting side of the institution.
Behind that sporting pitch sits a more ordinary picture of stability. Raúl’s family life has long been kept away from the spotlight, even as his career moved across clubs and countries, and Mamen Sanz has been the constant thread through it. They met at the end of 1997 through mutual friends and married in 1999 in Villafranca del Castillo; while waiting for their fifth daughter, Sanz enrolled remotely in Magisterio, later added studies in nutrition and photography, and the González Redondo family settled in La Finca in Madrid.
That private order matters because it contrasts with an earlier business detour that did not go well. Raúl once invested in renewable energy, but the company was liquidated in 2018 after accumulating significant debts. His current main company looks very different, closing 2024 with more than 11.5 million euros in assets, a profit of more than half a million euros and a structure that is practically free of debt.
For Real Madrid, the real question is no longer whether Raúl would be an emotional fit. It is whether Riquelme can win on Sunday and turn a conversation about a club legend into an appointment. Until that result is known, Rodri is less a return than a possibility waiting on one vote.
