Let me introduce you to one of the saddest videos I’ve ever seen. It starts off as a press conference. Iker Casillas speaks a language you might not understand, on behalf of a team you might not support. Over the course of two minutes, it is stripped – of formalities, of rivalry, of audience, of money – until you are left with a man, a cracked voice, a broken heart.
Twenty five years ago Casillas arrived at the Santiago Bernabeu, held up a scarf, took a picture. San Iker, the fans call him, Saint Iker, and he matched their devotion with his own. There are few men of his ilk in the football landscape today. In English football it would probably be Ryan Giggs with Manchester United. To think of them requires thinking of the shirt that they wore, and vice versa. But whereas Giggs was applauded off the pitch, seventy five thousand fans chanting his name, Casillas faced an empty stadium for his final goodbye. No teammates. No club officials. Only a piece of paper upon which he thanked, ironically, the ‘great institution’ that had turned his back on him. Real Madrid unfollowed him on social media less than a day after the conference, as if he wasn’t Real Madrid himself, but some half useful player who should consider himself lucky to say ‘I played for Madrid once’.
Therein lies the black mark on the erstwhile fairy tale. Retiring players leave on their own terms, even transferring players get wonderful send-offs, but Casillas is being barred even that honour. Watch the conference again, and again, if you must. That is not the picture of a man who wants to leave. Perhaps his performances of late have declined, but 725 senior games, five league titles, three champions leagues, and the Captain’s armband tell you he has more than earned his right to go when he chooses. Except he has been stripped of this, is instead given acrimony and a room of half-hearted reporters clapping because there is no one else to do so.
This is not the way it should be. No fan should have to watch their legend be pushed out of their club like a crumpled piece of paper tossed into a bin. By doing that Perez has taken away the very meaning of sport, is destroying the very idea of football. People lament the scarcity of one-club men these days, yet here he is making sure they remain scarce. And ruining other clubs in the process, taking their best players and putting them on his pretty bench. Iker Casillas Leaves Real Madrid, go the headlines, but they might as well have read Football Is Dying. Agents hold ransom, players demand exorbitance, fans turn, teams encourage disrespect.
But maybe Saint Iker will save us once again. Because, even as he leaves, he reminds us what it means to be a footballer. What it means to play. ‘Wherever I go,’ he says in the end, ‘I will keep shouting “¡Hala Madrid!”’ Even as he boards a plane to Portugal, he remains: ‘I won’t say goodbye because we shall meet here again soon.’
That is sport, whether you shout Hala Madrid, or Glory Glory Man United, or Mia San Mia. Only sport can make you cry like that, and it’s both terrible and beautiful, and we must remember why. It’s a hundred raw emotions that fill you with an infinite sense of being and belonging. It’s love, sheer unconditional unadulterated love for your team no matter what they do to you. It’s a little boy twenty five years ago, looking up at the shadow of the Santiago Bernabeu, thinking to himself, one day I will wear the number one shirt. One day all my dreams will come true.
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