The summer Liverpool parted ways with Steven Gerrard, Xavi said farewell to Barcelona, and Bastian Schweinsteiger left Bayern behind was a tearful one, because many great teams had to say goodbye to some of their best players. However, of those breakups, none sparked so much argument as the departure of Casillas from Real Madrid, the club he had spent 25 years of his career at.
Yes, you heard it right 25 years. It’s long enough that we can say Casillas spent the entirety of his career in Real. In 1990, at the age of nine, the Mostoles-born boy was admitted to the Real Madrid young talent team. He made it to the main team when he was in high school, and has not experienced any other football environment since. With three Champions League cups, five La Liga championship victories, and many other winnings, Casillas was one of the best players in Real’s long history. On a larger scale, Casillas can be considered one of the legendary goalkeepers of the world, with two Euro Cup championships (2008, 2012), and one World Cup grand finals victory (2010), all of which he played in as the team captain.
His career was not without setbacks, though, for he was the topic of debate in his last years in Bernabeu. The team itself was thrown into a small civil war, with players and fans alike taking sides to fight over whether Casillas was a “topo” (spy) or not.
It all began following Jose Mourinho’s press conference in late 2012, after a game with Malaga where Real lost 2-3. Mourinho insinuated that Casillas who was on the reserve line in that match was a spy who informed the press about the team setups prior to the match. The resulting war-like relationship between Mourinho and Casillas turned Madrid itself into a battlefield. Casillas even went so far as to meet Real Madrid’s chairman in person to give him an ultimatum: either the Portuguese coach left, or he would.
Casillas’s downfall
Ever since his 2012 “topo” scandal, Casillas forever lost his image as the perfect player in the eyes and the hearts of his fans. He became just another man clinging hopelessly to his position on the team. Mourinho clearly did not win the Madrid civil war, but neither did Casillas. When Real went on a Decima streak with its victory over Atletico Madrid in the Champions League grand finals last year, Casillas was blamed by fans and the media alike for his terrible plays, which led to Atletico’s first goal, bad plays that, in his final two years playing for Real, he made over and over again in every match.
Casillas went on to be the goalkeeper of the Spanish national team participating in the 2014 World Cup as the then standing champion, and partly due to his bad judgments, the Spaniards had to pack up early in the elimination rounds. People expected Casillas to leave, as he should, but he insisted on staying, forcing Real to sell Diego Lopez to AC Milan. Lopez - another player solely trained by Real, just like Casillas - bitterly said on his last Real day, “Everyone knows I am the best, right?”
Real then recruited Keylor Navas, La Liga’s best goalkeeper at the time, who had just had a successful World Cup tour with Costa Rica, but even Navas had to watch as Casillas played (and failed). The next few matches were disastrous for Real, and fans would have no more of Casillas. They claimed that its “obsolete” goalkeeper was the main reason for Real’s defeats, sparking the beginning of the end of the reign of Carlo Ancelotti.
Casillas loved Real, and in his departure from Real to Porto, he, more than everyone else, suffered. If only Casillas knew when to stop, he would have remained a dominating champion. After Man United went on its historical hat-trick in 1999, Peter Schmeichel chose to leave the team. Xavi also chose to depart from Barca after its glorious domination the previous season. Philipp Lahm said goodbye to the international football field after his awesome performance in the 2014 World Cup grand finals. It seems that they did the right thing, and Casillas’s decision to stay in Real was what ruined his career and reputation.
By holding on to his goal, he failed to keep it, and had to look as it rusted and crumbled. He was once the “Iker God” but that didn’t help when his beloved team fell into a civil war because of him. He was no longer praised, and more often than not, he was to blame for his team’s failures. His long time teammate and friend, Alvaro Arbeloa, even said that Casillas was “like a turmoil that Real should get rid of.”
Sometimes the best thing to do is to stop and preserve your image. Casillas failed to do this, and he himself undid all of his achievements, gained over than twenty years. Having stayed with Madrid for so long, Casillas, more than anyone else, should have known Madrid’s policies when it came to dealing with bad players (and good players, for that matter). He played for a team that fired Fabio Capello after two La Liga championships, kicked Jupp Heynckes after its first Champions League victory in 32 years, and made Vicente del Bosque and Fernando Hierro go into exile after a very successful season. Real Madrid fans loved Fernando Redondo, Mesut Ozil and Angel di Maria, yet these players were sold without a second thought. Casillas had nobody to blame but himself; he should have known that he had pushed his luck too far.
At Real Madrid, what you have done in the past has nothing to do with your value in the present. This applies to everyone, be it Raul, Guti, Casillas, or any other future legend. This is the nature of professional football, and of Real, the team that builds its glory with the sharpest swords of the time and does not hold on to past victories.
Casillas’s parents strongly criticized the way his son was treated by the Real Madrid board of management, but in hindsight, maybe Casillas himself is to blame for his hopeless battle of past glory in a team that always pushes forward.
