Iker Casillas said he kept his silence for the good of Real Madrid when being pushed aside by coach Jose Mourinho.
Casillas and Mourinho fell out early on during the Portuguese coach's three-year spell at Madrid, and the goalkeeper found himself sidelined during the final months of the 2012-13 season.
Some among the club's support had blamed Casillas for a perceived lack of support for the Madrid cause and, while the Spain international has been restored as Carlo Ancelotti's first choice this season, dissatisfaction remains evident, with the goalkeeper being whistled loudly during recent home games.
Asked during a lengthy interview on Canal Plus show "Inaki" why he had not publicly replied at the time to rumours and insinuations of disloyalty, Casillas suggested that not rising to the bait had been his way of dealing with the situation.
"I was being questioned -- people saying, 'He is over the hill', 'He has betrayed us' -- and maybe I should have spoken and answered, in this case, the coach [Mourinho], but I opted to remain silent for the good of the club," Casillas said. "Many people have reproached me for keeping silent. I believe that is what caused most annoyance, not throwing more wood on the fire."
The 33-year-old admitted that while not playing in the team he had felt "isolated," without support from either his teammates or club president Florentino Perez.
"I was fit again and [Mourinho's assistant] Aitor Karanka said I was not 'competitively' ready to play," he said. "I felt he had a problem with me, but nobody said anything to me. My teammates were maybe thinking if this happened to someone who has been at the club so many years, maybe it could happen to them too. I felt isolated, not part of the team, that was what most concerned me."
What happened was still hard to explain or understand, Casillas said, but he had found the strength to perform well when played in the Copa del Rey and Champions League last season by Mourinho's successor, Ancelotti.
"Two years ago, the things that happened to me, I do not know if it was witchcraft or voodoo," he said. "But, look, last season, the one when I played least in my career, I remember as the best of them all. And it was the one that could have affected me most. I had to find strength from inside."
Spain captain Casillas then endured a difficult World Cup in Brazil in the summer, although he maintained he felt unfairly singled out for La Roja's disastrous attempt to defend the trophy won in 2010.
"In this country, which has thousands of positive things, there are also bad things," he said. "And among those bad things is envy. It is true that a few months ago it was all terrible, and I was to blame for everything -- the first problem. Everyone wanted to get rid of me because I had the plague."
Casillas said he had considered leaving Madrid and Spain but he was now happy to see out the rest of his playing career at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu.
"I thought about leaving," he said. "You do not want to annoy people or create a bad atmosphere, because you always want Madrid to win, but then you think: 'I must compete and fight.' Those two years have made me fight and force myself. I did not do anything about leaving. It was more people who were talking about it. There was no concrete offer. My idea was, and is, to finish my career here."