In Marca’s new series’MARCA: Stories We Never Told,’ an interesting dialog inside Real Madrid’s changing room was revealed.
During the second half of the 2009/10 season, Raul Gonzalez found himself in the treatment room at Real Madrid.
After the Clasico defeat to Barcelona on April 10, the striker was ruled out for three weeks with a knee injury, joining Kaka on the injury list.
The Brazilian hadn’t played since the Champions League defeat to Lyon where he’d hurt his groin, which had taken longer to heal than first thought.
During their time doing recovery work together, Raul laid down a marker for the midfielder.
“You have to learn to play through the pain,” the striker said, predicting that he’d return to play before Kaka despite having a more severe injury.
Kaka was due to return for a match against Real Zaragoza on April 24 – a week before Raul was meant to start playing again.
As it happened, they both made the bench at La Romareda that night, with Raul getting on to the pitch first.
The Spaniard opened the scoring at the start of the second half before spraining his ankle almost immediately afterwards.
Raul made way for Karim Benzema before Kaka came on to score the winner in the final 10 minutes to seal an important victory in the title race.
That would be Raul’s last appearance in a Real Madrid shirt before leaving for Schalke in the summer.
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