José María del Nido: "I'm the biggest man in soccer"

José María del Nido Benavente has overseen the most successful period in the history of Sevilla Football Club and hails from a long line of supporters of the red half of the Andalusian city's great soccer divide: "In my house you can support Sevilla, or Sevilla. There is no alternative." He is also the focus of an investigation in which this week Andalusian prosecutors announced they will seek a 30-year-jail term for Del Nido for his alleged links to Operation Malaya. Nearly 100 defendants - a who's who in Marbella politics - are on trial in this property corruption case.

Del Nido, a lawyer by trade, was handed a seat in the Sevilla boardroom in 1986 as vice-secretary under the stewardship of Luis Cuervas Vilches. He spent less than two weeks as interim president in 1995, when the Professional Football League (LFP) was gunning for Sevilla and Celta de Vigo for not complying with new rules put in place after the introduction of the Sports Law of 1995, which required all soccer institutions to become public limited companies. Mass protests by supporters led the LFP to perform a volte-face, and after a short period of being a Segunda Division B club Sevilla was reinstated, with Celta, to the top flight, which was expanded to 22 teams to accommodate the beneficiaries of the original ruling, Valladolid and Albacete.

"When I took over this entity it was in absolute misery... the team was shit"

Prosecuters this week increased their sentence petition for Del Nido to 30 years

It was the first of Del Nido's triumphs in the presidential hot seat but on-field achievements would not swiftly follow. In the 1996-97 season, Sevilla was relegated to Segunda División, returning two seasons later under president Rafael Carrión. A lamentable campaign followed and Marcos Alonso, the architect of Sevilla's ascent, was sacked as the side made a quick return to the second tier. Sevilla's pain was only slightly eased in being accompanied there by its fierce city rival, Real Betis. Both sides returned again to Primera the following year. Del Nido took the reins from Roberto Alés García, who in turn had relieved Carrión, on May 28, 2002 and after a mid-table finish in his first season in charge Sevilla qualified for the Uefa Cup. In its centenary year, Sevilla won its first European title, the 2006 Uefa Cup, and successfully defended it the following year. Sevilla has since added the King's Cup (2007 and 2010) and the Spanish Supercup (2007) to the European Supercup it won in 2006.

All the while, Del Nido has busily set about embellishing his reputation as the country's most outspoken club president. He may be able to do no wrong in the eyes of Sevilla fans, but the firebrand Del Nido has proved a constant irritant to his peers. "In the soccer sphere, I am the most important man in the world," the lawyer once remarked. It is even not beyond Del Nido to steal protagonism from the Spanish royal family, as he did at the 2010 King's Cup final when he sought monarchic permission to wear a trilby hat in the dignitaries' box, ensuring the lingering gaze of the television cameras.

Del Nido's repertoire is not limited to biblical outbursts such as before a King's Cup match against Athletic Bilbao - "we are going to eat the lion from head to tail" - nor to goading José Mourinho before a match in the same competition this year with a promotional video featuring a phrase in Portuguese: "Somebody is going to end the year without a title." Del Nido termed the stunt 'genius' and said he had given its author a pay rise.

Betis once tried to have Del Nido banned from its stadium after a simmering feud between the clubs which culminated in Del Nido receiving a lighter between the eyes at a King's Cup match that was eventually called off in the 57th minute after then-Sevilla coach Juande Ramos was knocked unconscious by a bottle hurled from the stands.

The Sevilla president also took time out in 2005 to criticize his forebears in the post: "When I took over this entity it was in absolute misery. When I got here the team was shit." He later said his words had been misconstrued, but did not retract any part of the interview.

Del Nido's role as president of Sevilla earns him enough column inches to suit his towering ego, but he has also featured prominently in a high-level corruption case stemming from his professional dealings.

This week, the prosecution in the so-called Caso Minutas raised its sentence petition for Del Nido to 30 years from 13 for crimes of embezzlement, corruption, fraud, falsification of documents and influence peddling.

Del Nido stands accused of receiving 6.73 million euros from the Marbella city council between 1993 and 2003 for legal work that he allegedly never carried out. Anti-corruption investigators charge that Jesús Gil - the deceased former chairman of Atlético Madrid, ex-Marbella mayor, and a byword in Spain for shady dealings - and Julian Muñoz, another former Marbella mayor who is currently on trial in the Malaya case, in league with Del Nido and Juan Antonio Roca, the alleged mastermind behind Malaya, planned a "fraudulent, continuous" that cost Marbella's public coffers a fortune. Del Nido was for some time Muñoz's lawyer.

Nonetheless, when wearing his Sevilla hat, Del Nido is an unlikely champion of fair distribution of revenue. He is one of the leaders of a rebellion against the status quo in Spanish soccer, whereby Real Madrid and Barcelona carve up the lion's share of television revenue.

Sevilla, Athletic, Villarreal, Real Sociedad, Espanyol and Zaragoza are holding out against a strike on April 1 and 2, backed by Primera's 13 other clubs and called to dispute the lack of a complete pay-per-view model. The six clubs against the proposed strike also refused to put pen to paper on a new television deal that would still heavily favor Real, Barcelona, Atlético and Valencia. "I don't know how we could justify to our fans that we are only able to compete for fifth place," Del Nido last November when the contract negotiation was completed. Before his colorful reign was ushered in, Sevilla fans could only dream of such lofty ambition.