"You can win a lot of Champions League titles and a lot of league titles, but the farewell people have given me is hard to explain," explained the German legend.
Toni Kroos and Rudy Fernández were the stars of the second day of the Real Madrid Universidad Europea University School's White Week. Real Madrid's Director of Institutional Relations, Emilio Butragueño, moderated the event, in which the German legend, who won 23 titles, including 5 Champions League titles, in 465 games for our team, said: ‘Real Madrid has given me a new home. I left my country for the first time with a family, with my wife and an eight-month-old son. And now I am here with three children and the eldest is eleven years old. We have found a home and this also goes hand in hand with your success’.
Feelings
‘The value of the fans is worth more than a title. I will carry this with me for the rest of my life. People wait for me in the street and there I always think that I have done something right during these ten years. It's not just because of the titles I've won, it's because of something else. People have noticed over the years that my word is worth something. I always said that if I had the chance I would retire here at Real Madrid and I made that decision in the end’.
Withdrawal
‘The decision was not from one day to the next, it was a stage. I wanted to be important for the team and not to go through a time when people thought that my physical level was not the best or that my body was hurting. It has been a period of many conversations with my family, with my wife. You can win a lot of Champions League and a lot of league titles, but the farewell people have given me is difficult to explain’.
The key to his performance
‘The first thing is self-confidence. I'm not afraid, at least not in football, I'm very confident in my quality. I don't remember any game in which I was nervous or hesitant, I always wanted to go out on the pitch. We have had some difficult moments here in the ten years. Many titles, but there were also months of difficulties. And if you're not stable, I think that's when you start to doubt and it's very dangerous to doubt in a club like this. I haven't hesitated for a second in these ten years. Maybe I've been wrong sometimes, but I've been clear all these years that I was the best in the middle’.
European nights at the Bernabéu
‘The most important thing is to create an atmosphere together, that the team and the stadium go hand in hand, otherwise it is much more difficult. We have experienced situations that almost seemed impossible, like in the semi-final against Bayern in the last Champions League. The crowd gives us confidence, creates an atmosphere with little action and gives us that momentum’.
Rudy Fernández: ‘What this club generates on a human level is incredible’.
‘Coming to Real Madrid was undoubtedly the best decision I made in sporting terms. You realise when you come to this club how demanding it is, but above all the values it generates, of caring for the player, of feeling like I'm in a family here. Being able to live with all the athletes, both men's and women's football. In the end, what this club generates on a human level is incredible, and then on a sporting level it goes without saying that it is the best club in the world’.
Motivation for success
‘My family, of course. But the big culprit for me being able to sit here today and everything I have achieved is my father. My father demanded that if I took that step I had to go all out and I did. After every game I called him and he kept telling me what I had to do, at 15 and even at 36. And my family, my friends, but I think it's also where you fall and being lucky enough to be in a positive dynamic’.
Values
‘As I said: ‘To the end’. It's a little bit what I've tried to transmit to the new generations that have been coming up over the last few years and what they have been transmitting to me. Like Felipe as captain, then Sergi (Llull), and it's a bit like knowing that Madrid is as demanding as it is, but above all it's the value that comes with wearing this shirt. The luck I've had has been to know how to adapt to the needs of the club and the team, which in the end were always to reach the end with options. That's why you have to know how to manage that kind of pressure and I think that has been the value that has made me the player I have been. Giving everything on the court is the best image I could transmit to the young players’.
Special moments
‘It's very difficult to choose just one. I talk about titles and I get goose bumps, but when I see the people at that last match at the WiZink I get a little teary-eyed. That's what a sportsman wants in the end, to feel recognised by the people who really matter, who are the fans. For me that's the great triumph I've had during my career’.
Other speeches
The winner of 28 medals at the Paralympic Games and 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports, Teresa Perales, focused her speech on the achievement of glory: ‘It is not so much the fact of equalling Michael Phelps, but because in Spain it was the first time that in the same headline and in the same sentence an Olympic champion and a Paralympic champion appeared. From this point on, the Paralympic Games were given more visibility. It is the story of any athlete, winning medals or winning moments’.
Juan Contreras, Director of Global Marketing Adidas Real Madrid BU and Álvaro Vitores, Director of Sponsorship Activation at Real Madrid, also participated in the second day of the White Week with a conference entitled Adidas: how we build a strategic partnership together.