10 Football Players Who Were Nearly One Club Men
4. Iker Casillas
The story of Iker Casillas' final days at Real Madrid is heartbreaking.
The world-renowned goalkeeper had been at the capital club since 1990, joining when he was just 9 years of age. He saw a strong and steady rise through the Castilla system before breaking into the first team in 1999, making his debut for in a 2-2 draw with Athletic Bilbao.
He is the joint-10th most capped footballer for any nation, has the joint-most clean sheets at a World Cup and has won 25 pieces of silverware for club(s) and country. This includes captaining Spain to their 2010 World Cup victory.
His final days at Madrid, though, were tumultuous, to say the least.
Though he survived the war with former manager Jose Mourinho, Casillas was later pushed out of the club by President Florentino Perez for allegedly leaking locker-room stories to his reporter girlfriend, Sara Carbonero, in an attempt to win back his starting position in the team.
Following a messy end to his career in the Spanish capital, he would join Portuguese giants, Porto.
Though he would go on to win more silverware, Casillas revealed that he regretted the way he left Los Blancos, and was forced into retirement following health complications.