'Bodyguard' Casemiro joins Man United for a challenge unlikely to reap as many rewards

A tearful Carlos Henrique Casemiro bade farewell to Real Madrid on Monday at a ceremony where the club he has departed to join Manchester United lavished fulsome praise on him.

“You’ll always be one of us,” said the club’s president Florentino Perez in a speech reflecting the admiration Casemiro is held in. The 18 trophies he won over his eight seasons with Madrid were all on display.

After an emotional morning of goodbyes, the Brazilian flew to Manchester, aiming to arrive in plenty of time to take a seat in the stands at Old Trafford for Monday night’s visit of Liverpool, and from there assess, close up, what awaits him at United. “A great club” as Casemiro called them.

He has accepted a stiff challenge, at the age of 30, and a major boost in salary, but will know that he cannot expect trophies to come to him there at the rate they did in Madrid.

Perez, who has banked for his club a transfer fee that could rise to €70m for a move he said Casemiro had “gained the right to choose”, recalled one of his first conversations with the 20-year-old midfielder Madrid had scouted in Sao Paulo, and an early impression of the same confidence United have invested in. “You said to me that if you were given five games, that would be enough to show your quality,” remembered Perez. “It wasn’t to be five - it would be 336, and you fought through every game as if it were your last.”

As it happens, Casemiro’s last game as a starter in a Madrid jersey finished with a man-of-the-match award in a European final, the Uefa Super Cup victory over Eintracht Frankfurt two weeks ago. Three months ago, he collected his fifth Champions League gold medal in Madrid’s 1-0 win in Paris against Liverpool.

In the aftermath of that triumph, Casemiro said,