Casillas and his first call-up: I went from criticising Real Madrid to being in the squad LaLiga Santander - Real Madrid Spoke about his first selection

November 25, 1997 was a special day for Iker Casillas and it will forever be fondly remembered as the day when a 16-year-old boy was surprised with the best news imaginable.

Casillas will always be part of Los Blancos' history, and his story becomes all the better with the way that it started.

"Every Monday we would talk about the situation at Real Madrid and things were going very badly that year," Casillas said in an interview with Universo Valdano.

"We could see that Barcelona were going to win at Madrid.

?"Suddenly, the classroom door opened and there was the janitor with the director of studies, he told me to call my mother.

"I found out I had to go to the Alameda hotel and travel with Real Madrid because Santi Canizares was injured.

"He took me home in his Renault 11 and when I got home my mother had packed a suitcase with different shirts and pants and then I got a taxi to the hotel to travel with the first team."

Casillas went from sitting in his design class to travelling with Madrid, and he could barely believe it.

"Are you messing with me?" the youngster responded to the director.

The next day, Casillas penned a column in MARCA.

"My mother has already told me the story of how I found out I was going to Norway has already been published in all of the newspapers, so I'll get to the point," he wrote.

He may not have played that day, but it was the day when the historic and immortal story of Casillas at Real Madrid began.