Comments | flywoman: Farewell to two football legends

flywoman

Farewell to two football legends

Jul 14, 2015 21:06

This year, two of my favorite players are leaving their childhood clubs behind. Iker Casillas Fernandez, age 34, has been a goalkeeper for the first team at Real Madrid since 1999 and team captain for five years. Xavi Hernandez Creus, age 35, made his first team debut as a midfielder for FC Barcelona in 1998 and was captain this past season, when ( Read more... )

iker casillas, real madrid, futbol, xavi hernandez, spain nt, barca, xaviker

Comments 7

maria_anna_ozil July 16 2015, 14:56:40 UTC

True legends!
But I guess Casillas' goodbye from RM fans was a bit unfair he deserves more than that :(

Xavi was also lucky to end his career at Barcelona with a massive season! He will def not be forgotten.

flywoman July 16 2015, 23:06:48 UTC

As I understand it, many, many fans turned up to express their appreciation of Casillas. It's mainly the club management that treated him badly. He definitely deserved better!

And yes, Xavi was lucky to leave after an especially good year. He had originally planned to go the year before, but supposedly Luis Enrique persuaded him to stay. Hopefully he is glad that he did!

anna_king July 17 2015, 04:44:21 UTC

Thank you for this. Because you know exactly how I feel about these two. I love them both dearly and I have been very, very sad about their leaving ( ... )

flywoman July 17 2015, 18:26:41 UTC

That's Xavi - the man who says what needs sayin ( ... )

anna_king July 18 2015, 12:52:13 UTC

Hey, we are discussing over at Hala_Madrid whether or not Puyi and Valdes were treated well when leaving the club? Another Barca fan said that apparently they didn't get the same appreciation that Xavi did? Do you know anything about that?

(And good on Xavi...I am so glad he's brutally honest all the time. He's such a great guy and yes, I am sure he will come back to Barca and be welcomed back at that. With Iker I'm less sure...I know he'll come back or visit at some stage but while he is playing at Porto I will have this fear that he will have to play against Madrid. That would kill him for sure...)

flywoman July 18 2015, 19:41:12 UTC

Hmm. I hope other people on my f-list weigh in, but I would definitely agree that the club did not make such a big deal about either of them leaving - whether that was the way they wanted it or not, I don't know. Actually, I strongly suspect that Valdes left because he was disgusted by current management, so maybe that's not so surprising in his case. And Puyi was going to come back as part of the sporting directorship, but when Zubizarreta was fired, he quit in protest. So maybe their political situations were more similar to that of Casillas.

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