Kiko Casilla has spoken to several Spanish media outlets this week, explaining why he chose to join Leeds United and how he’ll look back on his time with Real Madrid fondly.
Clearly very popular in the Madrid club’s dressing room, Casilla will feel he played a part in the club’s successes of recent seasons, but now he wants to be useful on the pitch as well as off it.
Speaking to Spanish radio station Cadena Ser, the goalkeeper explained: “It always hurts to leave a club, even more being the team I grew up in. For me, Madrid and Espanyol are the biggest in football, the truth is that it’s crazy what I’ve lived in Madrid these three and a half years.
“It has been a pleasure and a joy to play at Real Madrid, I played a lot, I enjoyed it a lot, you see it from the outside, but from the inside they are all fantastic people who, when competing, put their batteries in and are different.”
Casilla’s main aim with Leeds United will be gaining promotion to the Premier League, and he wants success with the Yorkshire club for the duration of his contract.
Despite that, the Catalan stopper just can’t shake off his itch to return to Espanyol at some stage, and potentially finish his career at the Barcelona club: “Finish my career at Espanyol? I wish to be successful here at Leeds for years, but finishing at Espanyol, I wouldn’t say no.”
The 32 year old sounds happy and ready for the next stage of his career, and has plenty of time left to keep that Espanyol dream alive.
