Daniel Carvajal says his move away from Real Madrid was driven by fading minutes after his October arthroscopy, not by money. The 34-year-old Spanish defender said his importance on the pitch dropped around January or February, and that Getafe offered a chance to play again rather than stay in the background.

Carvajal's reason for leaving

"These last two years, with my injury, football had been missing a bit for me and I wanted to feel like a player again," Carvajal told Foot Mercato, in comments translated from French. He was even more direct about the move to Getafe: "Obviously, I did not come to Getafe for the money. I simply wanted to play football."

That lines up with the way he described the end of his spell at Madrid. From the return after his October arthroscopy, he said, "around January or February, I started to have less and less importance on the pitch." By the end of the season, he said, those around him and the club made contact and they agreed that a departure was the best solution.

Saudi Arabia was very much in play, too. Carvajal said talks there had been very advanced before family concerns and the wish to stay closer to home pushed him toward Getafe instead.

The Madrid pull remains

The move is not being sold as a clean break from Real Madrid, and Carvajal did not try to frame it that way. He said he had an incredible farewell at the club, one of the best experiences of his life, and still talks about the pull of Valdebebas with the kind of detail that shows how long the connection ran.

He spent 23 years associated with Madrid and made 451 appearances for the club, winning 27 trophies along the way. Even now, he describes La Décima as the start of a 12-year golden era, which is why the exit feels more like a change of setting than a hard severing of ties.

The football move is also a difficult one on paper. Getafe have won only 2 of their first 10 league matches, sit on 9 points and are 17th in La Liga. This is a fight for minutes and for survival, not a comfortable landing spot.

Carvajal has chosen that over the easier paycheque and the safer status of staying put. He wanted to play football again, and Getafe are the team that gave him that opening.

Written by Daniel Hartley with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 5 outlets. How we work →