At Real Madrid, that would mean only one thing: change. In Pérez’s two spells as president — from 2000 to 2006 and from 2009 onward — he has transformed his club into a sort of sporting Disneyland, a Panglossian paradise where everything is for the best, an endless victory parade. The image has to be maintained at all costs. “Any voice that is critical of his thinking is crossed out immediately as ‘anti-Madridista,’ ” SRM said of Pérez in an email. It is a mentality that also applies to fans and journalists.

Defeat, meanwhile, simply does not exist. Real Madrid TV, available for free to viewers throughout Spain, covers every Real game but does not hold live broadcast rights. It shows games Real has won in the days that follow. Footage of defeats — and sometimes ties, too — is quietly forgotten.

Pérez’s view of Real simply does not countenance the idea that it might lose games, at least not deservedly. When he first met Aleksander Ceferin, the then-recently installed president of UEFA, Pérez’s opening gambit was to ask why Real Madrid endured so many injustices at the hands of referees. Any setback, in Pérez’s eyes, could only be attributed to officials’ incompetence or to dark conspiracy.

Of course, fostering this ruthless, relentless culture has brought Real — and by extension its president — no little reward: the European trophies; the title, bestowed by Forbes, of the most valuable sports brand on the planet; more than 200 million followers on social media.

But it all comes at a cost. Failure is not tolerated. Players who do not perform are replaced. Managers who do not deliver are fired. The question that lingers, ahead of the game against P.S.G., is whether the same goes for presidents.

Even within his Disneyland, there are those who feel that would not be a bad thing. Throughout Pérez’s reign, there has been a constant murmur of dissent from a small but significant section of Real’s socios, who look beyond the glistening trophies to see a disturbing future ahead.