Real Madrid are rolling again, but goalkeeper Iker Casillas is still a worry
Real Madrid chose the season's best weekend yet to hold a general assembly for their socios, the club's members and stakeholders. Less than 24 hours before the gathering, the team had recorded the most handsome winning margin in an away match in La Liga this century, an 8-2 victory at Deportivo La Coruna. Four days earlier, they had started their defense of the Champions League with a 5-1 win against Basel.
Yet the headline issue from president Florentino Perez's address to his constituents was not the muscle-flexing of the previous week, the plans for stadium development, moves towards streamlining the academy, or debt-to-revenue ratios. It was the beleaguered goalkeeper, Iker Casillas. "I will take this opportunity," Perez told his audience, "to say: I have a worry. And that's the whistling I have been hearing in the Bernabeu stadium."
The chief-of-staff of the European champions then asked madridistas to be supportive, even after a wobbly start to their league season, with two defeats from the four matches so far, of the sole player in the dressing-room who has been at Madrid so long he precedes Perez, first elected a president in 2000, as a figurehead at the club. Casillas, captain of Madrid, World-Cup winning captain of Spain "has been in our first team for 15 years," the president pointed out, "and is the greatest goalkeeper in our club's history. He doesn't deserve the jeers he has been receiving. I don't like them. He deserves our respect. Let him do his work and let the head coach do what he has to do."
In other words: 'Over to you, Carlo Ancelotti'. For Ancelotti, the Madrid coach, there is a goalkeeper dilemma and there has been throughout his 14 months in charge at Real.
He inherited an awkward situation. Casillas, or 'San Iker' -- Saint Iker -- as he had become known among most Madrid fans between 2000 and 2012, had been controversially dropped, marginalized by Jose Mourinho, Ancelotti's predecessor. Initially, Ancelotti hit on a compromise, by picking Casillas for Copa del Rey and Champions League fixtures, while retaining Diego Lopez, Mourinho's favored keeper, in La Liga. The job-share worked to the extent Casillas ended up lifting the Champions League, and seeing enough action to stay as Spain's number one, though he made a high-profile error in the Champions League final and had a poor World Cup.
What happened in the summer complicated his situation. Perez, always liable to be seduced by players who star at World Cups, sanctioned the recruitment of the dashing Costa Rica keeper Keylor Navas, who had shone through two outstanding seasons in La Liga with Levante, and then did so again through the quarter-finals of the Brazil World Cup. Madrid sold Lopez to AC Milan, apparently to make way for the Central American. But so far Navas has stayed on Madrid's bench, while Casillas, increasingly aware of a noisy minority of the Bernabeu who boo him, has the gloves.
San Iker has now let in eight goals in his first four Liga matches. This to begin the season of his return to Real's league starting XI. He has not been at fault for most of those goals, but the record is still wobbly, alarming: Madrid, as Ancelotti sees, house a number of defensive frailties, which even in an 8-2 win over Deportivo, are hard to gloss over -- "there are things we must improve," said Ancelotti after the game -- particularly compared with the other likely title challengers. Ancelotti knows Atletico Madrid won La Liga last May thanks to their tightness at the back. And in the first month of this campaign, Barca now lead the table with a proudly immaculate record: Four wins from four; no goals let in.
One fascination about the 2014-15 Liga is that all three contenders for the title have embarked on it with new goalkeepers. Real Madrid have Casillas restored to number one in La Liga after his 18 months without having worn the gloves at all in the main domestic competition; and with Navas hired, as a glamor signing.
Meanwhile, at Barcelona, the iconic Victor Valdes let his contract expire last June, determined he would retail his brilliant reputation elsewhere, an aim postponed because he sustained a serious injury last spring. Barca then bought not one, but two, respected keepers. Claudio Bravo, Chile's first-choice, is now the proud bearer of a debut 360 minutes unbeaten for Barcelona, in the league; Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, the young German newcomer, kept a clean sheet in the Champions League on his debut, against Apoel, last Wednesday.
As for Atletico, they lost Thibaut Courtois, recalled from his long loan spell by his parent club Chelsea. He is a hard act to follow. So, rather like Barca post-Valdes, Atletico shared that burden by bringing in two men for one job: Miguel Angel Moya, a been-around-the-block Spaniard, who is 30, signed from Getafe, and Jan Oblak, the 21-year-old Slovenian, who arrived from Benfica for close to Euros16m, a record fee for a goalkeeper joining a Spanish club. So far, Moya mans La Liga, Oblak plays in the Champions League. And neither have quite established Courtois's aura.
So, even after a weekend when La Liga seemed to revert to old standards -- Madrid won by six goals, Barcelona by five, against a Levante clearly weakened by the departure of Navas -- there are big questions, dilemmas at each of the heavyweights about their keepers. Glovemen may turn out to be as crucial as anybody, as significant as Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, in the title race.
