Leeds United have signed goalkeeper Kiko Casilla from Real Madrid, the Championship club have confirmed.<\/p>\n
Casilla, the former Spain international, has penned a four-and-a-half year deal with Marcelo Bielsa’s side, keeping him at Elland Road until the summer of 2023.<\/p>\n
He becomes Leeds‘ first signing of the January transfer window.<\/p>\n
Bought from Real Madrid, Casilla has also represented Espanyol, Cadiz and Cartagena throughout his 15-year career, having started as a professional as part of Los Blancos’ academy.<\/p>\n
He returned to his boyhood club in 2015 to become the club’s second choice glovesman, winning 10 trophies over the past three-and-a-half years despite making just 43 appearances.<\/p>\n
Casilla joins Leeds with Marcelo Bielsa’s side top of the Championship table and favourites to win promotion to the Premier League.<\/p>\n
The Whites are four points ahead of second place Sheffield United and 11 points clear of falling out the play-offs, but doubts have been raised throughout the season about the quality of starting goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old has made a couple of mistakes this term and Bielsa has moved to sign an upgrade on the Northern Ireland international. There are no guarantees Casilla will immediately replace Peacock-Farrell as Leeds’ No.1, however, and the youngster will hope to add to the 31 appearances he has already made throughout 2018\/19.<\/p>\n
If introduced into Bielsa’s starting line-up straight away, Casilla will make his debut for the Elland Road club on Saturday afternoon with Leeds visiting Stoke hoping to extend their lead at the top of the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leeds United have signed goalkeeper Kiko Casilla from Real Madrid, the Championship club have confirmed. Casilla, the former Spain international, has penned a four-and-a-half year deal with Marcelo Bielsa’s side, keeping him at Elland Road until the summer of 2023. He becomes Leeds‘ first signing of the January transfer window. Bought from Real Madrid, Casilla…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}