One-club XI: Footballers who have only played for a single club

Football has seen innumerable technically gifted footballers; from Pele to Diego Maradona, Zinedine Zidane to David Beckham, Thierry Henry to Ronaldinho, Cristiano Ronaldo to Lionel Messi et al. While some prefer to make the most of their success by swapping clubs to get more success, fame and the money that follows it, some prefer to stay back at the club and pay back the love and faith.With money grabbing football by its neck with each passing day, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find loyalty, commitment, and the ‘one-team-man’ spirit amongst the current crop of players.Yet, this era has provided with some of the most loyal, unassuming and majestic footballers to savour. Here’s a compilation of some of these men who against all odds, stayed/  continue to stay at their clubs as a token of appreciation towards the club that helped them in every possible way to rise up the ladder.Honourable mentionsRogerio Ceni (Sao Paulo), Igor Akinfeev (CSKA Moscow), Gary Neville (Manchester United), Tony Hibbert (Everton), Jamie Carragher (Liverpool), John Terry (Chelsea), Daniele de Rossi (AS Roma), Bastian Schweinsteiger (Bayern Munich), Ledley King (Tottenham Hotspur).

#1 Goalkeeper - Iker Casillas

Real Madrid almost revolutionised the way football squads were assembled, with money begging to be spent on any top footballer available at that time. ‘The Galacticos’ as they were popularly known, boasted of some of the very top footballers from around the globe.

The onus was then on the youthful shoulders of those coming through the youth ranks and dreaming of breaking into the first team to convince the manager that they were good enough to sustain the pressure to perform at the highest level and challenge the ones who were the best in the business for a place in the side.

Many dreams were brutally crushed, but one man shone through all the money madness: Iker Casillas. Coming through the fabled Real Madrid youth academy ‘La Fábrica’ Casillas first broke onto the scene as a 16-year-old to face Rosenborg in the Champions League in 1997 and it was then that the record books realised that they were about to be going for a toss.

11 domestic honours including 5 La Liga titles, 7 European honours including 3 Champions Leagues and one FIFA Club World Cup, IFFHS World’s Best Goalkeeper award for 5 years in a row between 2008 and 2012, 2 European Championships in 2008 and 2012, the FIFA World Cup in 2010, and around 25 individual awards decorate his stellar playing career.

Now 33, the Spain and Real Madrid skipper has amassed 505 and 161 appearances for the Los Blancos and La Roja respectively, and will go down as a true goalkeeping legend.