REVEALED: The phone call that destroyed the relationship between Jose Mourinho and Iker Casillas at Real Madrid, as they prepare to meet again in Champions League clash

• Iker Casillas and Jose Mourinho fell out during their time at Real Madrid 
• The relationship fell apart when Casillas called Xavi after El Clasico fight
• Spain keeper sought reconciliation with international team-mate
• But Mourinho saw the agreement as a sort of surrender to Barca
• The pair meet again when Mourinho's Chelsea face Casillas' Porto

By Pete Jenson for MailOnline

Published: 04:44 EST, 28 September 2015 | Updated: 08:15 EST, 28 September 2015

It was the phone call that would destroy the relationship between Jose Mourinho and Iker Casillas once and for all.

The Real Madrid goalkeeper was on one end of the line and Barcelona captain Xavi on the other. 

Casillas had called after yet another Clasico had descended into an ugly brawl. He was angry when the conversation started but his tone changed as Xavi, one of his oldest friends in football, told him that both sides needed to think about the way they were behaving.

The conversation ended in reconciliation. Mourinho was furious.

Jose Mourinho (left) and Iker Casillas fell out during their time together when the former managed Real Madrid

The relationship collapsed after Casillas (left) called Barcelona captain Xavi following a Clasico brawl

Casillas, seen training ahead of Porto's home game against Chelsea, left the Bernabeu after Mourinho

Casillas and Mourinho meet again on Tuesday night at the Estadio de Dragao and neither has changed his view of their three seasons together.

‘Iker deserves a lot of credit’ said Xavi in a recent Marca interview. ‘He called me and [Carles] Puyol. I told him that both sides had to look at themselves. He was looking out for the interests of Spanish football.’

For Mourinho it was treachery. He had decided that the only way to beat Barcelona was to make war with them; Casillas had effectively raised the white flag.

Casillas and Mourinho’s antagonistic relationship started when the Portuguese coach arrived at Madrid in 2010.

Casillas had just lifted the World Cup and didn’t like Mourinho’s imposition that Madrid could not match Barcelona by just playing football .

For Mourinho’s tastes Casillas – while a brilliant shot-stopper – lacked the physique and personality to dominate his area and his defence. But as time went by their differences would go much deeper.

The Spanish keeper's struggles with the fans at his boyhood club dates back to the falling out with Mourinho

Both Casillas and Mourinho criticised each other in public, while Casillas had the ear of the club's president

The phone call came as Casillas was upset about the violence between Spain's two biggest clubs

Mourinho had already decided the best way to play Barcelona was to make war with them on the pitch

In November of their first season together Real Madrid lost 5-0 away to Barcelona in what Mourinho described as ‘the worst defeat of his career’. When the two teams met again the following April he was more determined than ever to do things his way.

Before the game Marca leaked Mourinho’s team line-up breaking the news that he had pushed defender Pepe into midfield to form a formidable dogs of war trio with Sami Khedira and Xabi Alonso.

The game ended 1-1 but many of the Madrid players hated the tactics, and Mourinho hated what he saw as a breach of trust with someone having leaked the team to the press. 

So began the soap opera of the ‘Madrid mole’ with Casillas, off-message tactically, and with a journalist girlfriend in Sara Carbonero, the chief suspect.

The Spain shot-stopper and his Portuguese manager had a stormy relationship for the rest of their time at Real

Casillas disliked his manager's negative tactics, while Mourinho believed the keeper was leaking secrets

Madrid beat Barca in the Spanish Cup final and so when they faced each other in the Champions League semis Casillas headed up a group of players who believed that their great rivals were now there for the taking.

Mourinho had other ideas. Happy to take a goalless draw to the Nou Camp in the second leg, he wanted his team to sit back. The plan broke down when Pepe was sent off and Lionel Messi scored twice.

Casillas was not the only player to disagree with Mourinho’s tactics - Cristiano Ronaldo said after the game: ‘I don’t like to play that way, but I have to adapt to what the team asks from me.’ He was dropped for the next league game but Casillas was still seen as chief subordinate.

In the second leg of a bitterly-contested Spanish Super Cup at the start of the 2011-12 season tensions came to a head with a touchline brawl following a Marcelo foul on Cesc Fabregas and included the moment Mourinho poked then-Barcelona assistant coach Tito Vilanova in the eye.

Casillas had been as hot-headed as anyone in the melee seeking out both Fabregas and Xavi but when he saw footage of himself after the game he made the famous phone call to his Barcelona friend Xavi – the one that so infuriated Mourinho.

casillas and Xavi are close friends from their time together in international football

Despite an attempt to draw a line under the issues in their second season , the relationship never recovered

Mourinho saw Casillas, with his journalist girlfriend Sara Carbonero, as the source of leaks

The stormy Super Cups had polarised the supporters. There were those who believed Mourinho was damaging Madrid but others were glad they were now making Barcelona sweat for their supremacy.

Casillas sought out Mourinho in the pair’s second season together to say that for all their differences he would give everything for the team. 

Madrid won the league but were again beaten by Barcelona in the cup with a Pepe stamp on Messi the enduring image of another unsavoury clash, and they lost to Bayern Munich in the Champions League semi-final.

Casillas continued to be part of a group within the squad who blamed Mourinho’s cautious tactics for these big-match failures. 

He also disliked being told to push a certain line in post-match interviews and resented the access and influence he felt Mourinho’s agent Jorge Mendes now enjoyed at the club.

Casillas and Carbonero form a high-profile couple but their relationship led to Mourinho's mistrust

The dislike was mutual. In his book ‘The Special One’ prominent Spanish football journalist Diego Torres wrote that: ‘There was a feeling that Mourinho saw him [Casillas] as a grass, a mole, a traitor and an egoist.’

Madrid is a club where senior players have direct access to the president and there were meetings between Casillas and Sergio Ramos and Florentino Perez that Mourinho saw as further demonstrations of disloyalty. 

Casillas also further wound up his boss by saying in one interview that he possessed the values taught him by of all people, Pep Guardiola.

Ahead of their third and final season together Mourinho urged the club to buy another goalkeeper and when in December Madrid were 11 points behind Barcelona, he dropped Casillas for 26-year-old reserve keeper Antonio Adan.

He was left out again in the next game against Real Sociedad but came off the bench after eight minutes because Adan was sent off. 

Half the Bernabeu cheered him, the other half – siding with Mourinho – jeered. And so it would be for the rest of his career in Spain even beyond Mourinho’s departure.

The former Real Madrid manager and goalkeeper meet again on Tuesday for Porto and Chelsea

The falling out with Mourinho marked the beginning of the end for Casillas at Real Madrid for some fans

He lamented in a recent El Mundo interview: ‘The important thing was to get behind the team not make me the centre of attention, but it was the hangover from the previous era.’

When Casillas broke a bone in his hand in that third season Mourinho finally got to sign another keeper with Diego Lopez arriving from Sevilla. 

In one press conference he said: ‘Just as Casillas can say he would prefer another coach such as [Vicente] Del Bosque or [Manuel] Pellegrini, I can say that I prefer Diego Lopez. And while I’m the coach of Madrid, Diego Lopez will play.’

Casillas will have another chance to prove Mourinho wrong on Tuesday night. 

Speaking after the two were drawn together in the Champions League draw he said: ‘I never spoke publicly about him at the time and I don’t think I ever will. 

'People know how it was. In the end we just did not have a good relationship.’

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