Casillas saves seal shootout win for Real
MUNICH - Real Madrid's World Cup-winning goalkeeper Iker Casillas saved three penalties as his team enjoyed a 4-2 shootout win over Bayern Munich in a testimonial match for Franz Beckenbauer on Friday.
The Kaiser, who stepped down as club president late last year, has been linked with Bayern for the past 51 years as an extremely successful player, coach and president.
Strangely enough, Beckenbauer, one of Germany's all-time greats who won the World Cup as a player and a coach, never had a testimonial after leaving the Bavarians he had joined as a teenager in 1959 to play for the New York Cosmos in 1977.
Bayern, missing injured winger Arjen Robben, were livelier at the start with Frenchman Franck Ribery looking on track to hit the right form in eight days when the German season starts.
Ribery, who extended his contract with the German League and Cup double winners to 2015 after their Champions League defeat by Inter Milan in May's final, was a constant threat on the left and was brought down in the box in the eighth minute.
Casillas denied defender Holger Badstruber from the spot and later spectacularly palmed a fierce left-footed Danijel Pranjic shot over the bar.
Real coach Jose Mourinho, who moved from Inter after this year's Champions League win, was without injured Brazilian playmaker Kaka but his star-studded line-up included Cristiano Ronaldo, Xabi Alonso and new signing Angel di Maria.
Apart from a Rafael van der Vaart shot and a saved Ronaldo header, Real, still two weeks from the start of their season, did not really shift into top gear for long periods of time.
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The game went to penalties after ending goalless, with no extra time, and Casillas saved spot-kicks from Edson Braafheid and Hamit Altintop to lift the oversized Beckenbauer Cup.
"We need tough opponents like Bayern. We need these matches ahead of the season. But you saw we still have a bit to go," Mourinho said.
"We have two weeks to go and I hope we will use them to put it all together," he said.