It’s hard to imagine Iker Casillas playing for anyone else but Real Madrid, and it’s an even greater strain on the imagination to see him putting on a Barcelona jersey, but as the saga continues at the Santiago Bernabeu regarding who was recently considered the best goalkeeper in the world, no option can be taken off the table.
If anyone thought that everything will go back to normal once Jose Mourinho left and Carlo Ancelotti took over, he was wrong. It seems that the advice Mourinho left to his successor, which is getting rid of Casillas because he simply is too powerful to handle in the dressing room didn’t go completely through with Ancelotti, but it does seem like he’s not planning on using the Spanish international up until now as a starting goalkeeper.
According to Sport and other Catalan media outlets, the entire situation becomes very intriguing for Barcelona, who have had some sort of alleged meeting between the club’s powerful figures (Rossell heading the group), and considering their next course of action and if approaching Casillas is even an option.
It’s been quite a rare occurence to have a player leave one of the clubs, especially Real Madrid, to go on and play directly for Barcelona. The last of them was Luis Enrique in 1996, and he wasn’t even close to being the symbol Casillas is for Madrid fans, who never saw the whole Mourinho – Casillas thing as something professional, but simply a clash of egos, with the manager trying to vent out his frustration with the man who has won a World Cup and two European championships with Spain, not to mention being the last player on the club to win a Champions League title with them (back in 2002).
But stranger things have happened. Raul left to Schalke at some point, and even though Schalke isn’t Barcelona, it’s never something that shouldn’t be considered. Casillas is a Madridista through an through, but when you’re shown the way out again and again by the managers, even leaving to the club’s greatest rival is something worth considering.