Iker talks about growing up in Real Madrid in an article from guillembalague.com:
Joining Real Madrid was strange for me, a completely different experience. I’d always played on the streets with my mates or my dad and then gone home. Now, suddenly, I had to grow up really quickly, even though I was only nine years old. I met new kids; I was thrown in with people I didn’t know. One particular example: we had to have showers together. It might seem silly, but I had never had to shower with other kids before; I’d never had to get undressed in public! I had always gone home to wash. But now? Taking my clothes off in front of other people? I felt really embarrassed. New experiences can make you feel uncomfortable; they force you to change and to grow up quickly. I had to learn things I’d never expected to have to learn, things I’d never even thought about.
Life for me, aged nine, at Madrid was a challenge. But hard? No, I wouldn’t call it hard. It was just new: new experiences and a new way of thinking. I`d never really thought of Real Madrid as having a youth system or a kids’ team. Madrid was Madrid: the famous players. I never imagined this group of kids being part of what Madrid was about too. I’d never imagined the club had so many teams, so many lads on their books. In fact, nor had my mum! She thought my dad must have been making it all up: “Why would Madrid have a big team for boys who are just nine or ten years old?” Anyway, I was suddenly thrown into a whole new world. It seemed crazy. I’d have to travel 40 minutes to come into Madrid and train; it felt then like it was so far away. It was somewhere I’d only ever been to if Mum had to go to the dentist or something. And now I was there all the time. Madrid: the big city. Madre mía!
Iker + shower = !!!! And I love imagining him as a little kid, going to the big city… in Steve McManaman’s book, he said they used to make fun of Iker because his first year on the first team, he was still using the metro to get to practice at the old Ciudad Deportiva.