Iker Casillas

From Drawing Class to the Mud of San Mamés

In November 1997, the principal of the Cañaveral secondary school in Móstoles interrupted a technical drawing class to tell a sixteen-year-old kid to pack his bags. He was traveling to Norway with the Real Madrid first team to face Rosenborg because the two starting goalkeepers were injured. He never got to play that match. But two years later he made his debut in the cauldron of San Mamés, conceding four goals in a 2-2 draw that foreshadowed the harshness of the job.

Glasgow changed the rules in May 2002. César Sánchez went down on the pitch with a muscle problem twenty minutes from the end against Bayer Leverkusen, and the kid ran onto the cold-as-ice pitch. Three timely saves in stoppage time sealed Real Madrid's ninth European Cup at just twenty-one years and four days old.

And the legend suddenly swallowed the footballer.

He collected two European Championships and a World Cup with the Spanish national team between 2008 and 2012. In the final in Johannesburg against the Netherlands, he deflected a point-blank shot from Arjen Robben with his right fingertips in the 62nd minute. That save steadied a team gripped by tension and settled a final that seemed destined to go to penalties.

Cold War at Chamartín and a scare at Do Dragão

The arrival of José Mourinho in 2010 opened an irreparable rift in the Santiago Bernabéu dressing room. Tensions over the Clásicos against Barcelona and the call for a truce with Xavi Hernández led to a punitive benching that divided the stands. An accidental kick from Álvaro Arbeloa at Mestalla in January 2013 fractured his left hand and paved the way for the signing of Diego López. He never regained his untouchable starting spot in La Liga.

In July 2015, he stood in the stadium press room with no club executives beside him, holding a trembling sheet of paper and with tears in his eyes after twenty-five years with the club. That lonely farewell caused such a reputational scandal that the club organized an impromptu event the next day to repair the damage.

He left for Porto to find some sporting breathing room, and there he won a Portuguese league title in 2018. But his routine came to an abrupt halt on May 1, 2019, during a training session at the Olival complex. He suffered an acute myocardial infarction that required an emergency catheter at the CUF Porto hospital.

His body said enough on the pitch.

On August 4, 2020, he formally announced his retirement from football in a sober online statement.

The Business Behind the Movistar Documentary

In November 2020, the Movistar+ platform premiered the documentary series Colgar las alas, directed by Luis Fermoso. The production followed the goalkeeper's recovery for a year and a half and exposed the psychological aftermath of his heart attack with unusual candor for elite football. The cameras captured his real fear of stress tests and the emptiness left by being forced into retirement at age thirty-eight.

In December 2020, he took on the role of deputy managing director at the Real Madrid Foundation, to build bridges with the club led by Florentino Pérez. He then channeled his influence into venture capital and medical technology. In October 2021, he founded the SportBoost accelerator to back business projects focused on sports cardiology and performance analysis.

The goalkeeper quietly became an investor.

In 2022, he agreed to chair the club 1K FC in the Kings League, created by Gerard Piqué, where he connected with online audiences through Twitch broadcasts. The following year, he expanded his private investments into the health tech company Idoven and the urban fashion brand Kream. In the 2022 tax filing, his holding company Casillas World SL reported assets worth 5.86 million euros.