Football legend Iker Casillas was still happily married and
blissfully ignorant of the career-ending heart attack he would suffer the year after Claudia Bavel made her X-rated film actress debut aged just 18.
She was a former shop worker introduced to porn by an ex-boyfriend she met during a brief appearance on a
national Spanish TV dating show who ignored his warnings it would change her life 'for ever' because of the earning potential.
Neither Casillas or Claudia could have envisaged then their paths would cross as explosively as they have in the past fortnight after their shock relationship was exposed by paparazzi photographers the pretty brunette has been accused of tipping off for fame and fortune.
The fallout from the unlikely pairing of the former porn star-turned-Only Fans model, and the footballer known in his prime as Saint Iker because of his astonishing saves, is still making headlines around the world after she subsequently claimed in a kiss and tell Spanish TV interview he had been better on the pitch than in bed and played some of the spicy WhatsApp audios he had sent her.
Despite ostracising 27-year-old Claudia, the 43-year-old father-of-two is still only one click away on his keyboard from seeing her in action as a teenager, still wearing braces on her teeth, with the likes of porn legend Nacho Vidal and a famous Spanish baby-faced adult performer whose stage name in English is Jordi 'The Dick Boy.'
The former shop worker was introduced to porn by an ex-boyfriend she met during an appearance on a national Spanish TV dating show
Claudia ignored her ex-boyfriend's warning that the X-rated world would change her life 'forever' because of the earning potential
The unlikely pairing of the former porn star-turned-OnlyFans model and the retired goalkeeper is making headlines around the world after she claimed Casillas is better on the pitch than in bed
Spain legend Casillas was still happily married the year Claudia made her X-rated film actress debut aged just 18
Online Spanish language biographies describe Iker's former lover as the daughter of divorced parents who was born in the north-east Spanish city of Girona but moved to Malaga on the Costa del Sol as a seven-year-old before returning to Catalonia aged 16.
She combined studies with part-time work in clothes shops and hotels in Barcelona before friends sent off her CV to well-known Spanish TV dating show 'Women and Men and
Cibai vice versa' where she met the man who would open the doors to her new life as a porn star.
Claudia claimed in a podcast interview last year she was earning at least £16,500 a month from Only Fans and had just added to a burgeoning property empire by buying a large villa solely for filming in Barcelona with themed rooms.
She revealed of her entry into porn: 'When I was in Madrid I met a man who didn't tell me he was an actor but asked me if I wanted to accompany him to work one day.
Casillas, who played more than 500 games for Real Madrid, was known in his prime as 'Saint Iker' because of his astonishing saves
'When I saw what he did and realised it was something that was easy where you could make good money I thought, 'Who's going to see me if I do this, who sees porn!''
'I realised I had been wrong in less than a month when I had become one of the most watched X-rated actresses.
'I had always been very shy and wore baggy clothes.
'My mum found out what I was doing one day and phoned me to ask if I'd been kidnapped.