I'll play for Real Madrid until I'm 40! Iker Casillas says he's going nowhere ahead of Champions League clash with Liverpool

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We've all been there — bored to tears at school, clock-watching, thinking you might actually nod off. And then Real Madrid hammer on the classroom door and pull you out of the lesson so you can fly to Norway and sit on the bench in a Champions League group game against Rosenborg.

Iker Casillas was 16 years old when he was taken out of a technical drawing class to join up with the Real squad in 1997. Against Liverpool he will become the man who has played more games in the competition — 144 —than any other.

He has won it three times in a 15-year first-team career and he has news for anyone who might think his time at the top is almost up.

Iker Casillas celebrates winning the Champions League with Real Madrid after beating rivals Atletico Madrid

Casillas has won three Champions League titles during his 15 years in the Real Madrid first team

‘I think I can play on until I’m 40,’ Casillas told Sportsmail. And he doesn’t mean play on in less demanding surroundings. ‘I started here and I want to finish here,’ he says, crushing any talk that this will be his last season at the club.

He has become the villain in the eyes of some supporters in recent years. A whispering campaign pinned him, mistakenly he says, as the mole in the dressing room that Jose Mourinho gradually lost control of at Real Madrid.

But there are also those at the club who will always see him as the local kid made good. 

‘They pulled me out of school because Bodo Illgner and Santi Cañizares were injured and they needed me as a second keeper,’ he says of that day back in November 1997.

‘I was taken to the headmaster, who by the way was a big Madrid fan, and before I knew it I was on a school minibus going home, where my mum was frantically packing my bag for me. The other kids had no idea why I had left the class and there was no Twitter or mobile phones to tell them what was happening.’

Casillas' reputation was damaged when it was claimed he was a dressing room mole under Jose Mourinho

Cañizares ended up recovering and young Iker was only Real’s third keeper but coach Jupp Heynckes still told him to get changed and take his place on the bench. 

‘I knew who they all were, but no-one had a clue who I was,’ he says of his illustrious team-mates. ‘I sat on the same table before the game as Cañizares and Fernando Morientes but I never said a word.’

Casillas says he hasn’t ‘done the maths’ as to how many games he will play in the Champions League. 

‘The immediate challenge is to win it two years in a row,’ he says. ‘If we show the same desire we did last year, why not? First we have to get through to the knockout stages.’

Defeating Liverpool would make sure of that but he sees one major reason why it will not be as easy as some are suggesting. ‘Liverpool have to win,’ he says. ‘English teams never back down. Liverpool will come here to a stadium where they have won before and they will give it everything.’

The visitors have their own Casillas in Steven Gerrard: the one-club man whom the Real keeper calls ‘the essence of Liverpool’.

The Real legend trains while summer signing and Costa Rican international Keylor Navas watches on

Casillas will make his 144th Champions League appearance when his side take on Liverpool at the Bernabeu

‘These are the players that give the club its identity,’ he says. ‘Carles Puyol and Xavi at Barcelona and Totti at Roma — players with a genuine link to the supporters. And if you are happy and playing well at a big club then you never have a reason to go anywhere else.’

Having sought Gerrard out for a shirt swap at Anfield, Casillas says he will look for Mario Balotelli, although not at half-time. ‘You can swap shirts at half-time in Spain and it’s no problem,’ he says of Balotelli’s troubles a fortnight ago.

Casillas’s career at Madrid has brought him grief and glory. Mourinho benched him, bringing in Diego Lopez, whom he said he felt was a better keeper.

Carlo Ancelotti’s diplomatic solution to the over-booking he inherited was to play Lopez in the league and Casillas in the Spanish Cup and the Champions League. He promptly won the two tournaments he was part of while Madrid could finish only third in the league.

Casillas said he will look to swap shirts with Mario Balotelli when his side take on Liverpool 

Casillas has won five league titles, three Champions Leagues, the World Cup and two European Championships

The Champions League won last May in Lisbon was the club’s 10th and in the ecstasy of the immediate aftermath he told reporters it felt even better than winning the World Cup, although he now puts that down to the sheer relief as his mistake that allowed Atletico Madrid to score the opening goal no longer mattered.

‘When it happens you stand there on the goal-line thinking about it and you want to leave your penalty area and try to get the equaliser yourself but you know you can’t. So you can imagine how I felt when Sergio Ramos’s header went in.

‘One of the sad things about football is that people only remember the most recent thing you have done. My mistake allowed Atletico to take the lead. Winning a trophy is not about one game, it’s about the whole season and fighting to reach the final and my season in the competition had been very good.

‘But we had been in control of the game and an absurd moment from me looked like costing us the match.

‘I remember looking around the stadium and seeing thousands of people with the white shirts and I felt terrible. Luckily in the last move of the game we got the draw and then I think the extra time reflected how much better we really were.

Casillas is captain of both Real Madrid and Spain, and has made 158 appearances for his country 

‘Sergio’s goal rescued me from a lot of criticism. I’m sure quite a few papers had to change their headlines in that last minute.’

It takes a certain type of toughness to succeed at a club like Real Madrid for so long. Casillas has bounced back this season. His form of late for his club side has been excellent. The mistake against Slovakia paved the way for David de Gea, whom he describes as ‘both the present and future of Spanish football’, to replace him for the national side but he says he’ll keep playing with the Spain team until at least Euro 2016.

And with Real the obsession for the decima has quickly been replaced by the need to win the undecima (11th). 

‘This club is so big that winning the European Cup buys you about a month’s grace,’ he smiles. ‘When you have as good a team as we have then you have to try to go out and win it again. There is no place for biding your time. You get a crash course in impatience when you join.’

Eleven must follow 10 — it’s the Real Madrid way.