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Legendary goalkeeper Iker Casillas has explained why he left the Anfield pitch in tears after making one of the greatest performances of his stellar career.
The Spanish World Cup-winning custodian retired from soccer last year after a five-year stint with FC Porto, which saw him break records for most Champions League games and a clean sheet.
He will always be associated with Real Madrid, however, where he rose to the ranks as a young man and won three Champions League and five La Liga titles, among a host of other honors in a 510-game career for the Spanish giants. spanning 16 years.
Casillas’ swan song in Porto twice saw him receive warm ovations from the Anfield crowd when he appeared against Liverpool in the knockout stages of the 2018 and 2019 Champions League, many of whom would have remembered the impressive personal performance that he had performed against the Reds a decade earlier.
And in an interview with the New York Times, Casillas revealed his memories of that March 2009 game that he admits caused him to leave the field with tears in his eyes.
Rafa Benítez’s team entered the knockout stages of the Champions League with a 1-0 lead thanks to Yossi Benayoun’s header at the Bernabéu Stadium three weeks earlier.
Liverpool would record a beautiful 4-0 win on the night to advance to the quarter-finals, but the club’s record 11-0 win over Norway’s Stromsgodset in a 1974 Cup Winners’ Cup tie could have been threatened if It would not have been for a remarkable display of goalkeeping by Casillas, which produced a series of brilliant saves to keep the Reds out of control that night.
A few days before journalist Rory Smith conducted the NY Times interview, Casillas retweeted a video from the official UEFA Champions League account that included a montage of his performance at Anfield that night and with footage showing that he left. the field crying, admitted the goalkeeper. he knew Liverpool “could have scored 12” and said he felt a lot of responsibility.
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“It was a face of helplessness, not anger,” he said.
“I was frustrated, sad. It meant that seven years had passed since the Real had reached the final.
“You can lose a playoff game. We lost the first leg, 1-0. But lose, 4-0?
“All the Real Liverpool fans, all the fans in the world, I felt their frustration.”
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