How Will Alvaro Arbeloa's Real Madrid Career Be Remembered?

They’d probably try to tell you otherwise, but Real Madrid can’t just exist on a diet of star players.

Of course, there always has to be a Cristiano Ronaldo, a Gareth Bale and a James Rodriguez—who sold £20 million worth of shirts within one week of his arrival at the club in 2014, per the Independent—but the elite need their faithful servants, too.

And few have been more faithful than Alvaro Arbeloa, who said an emotional goodbye to the Santiago Bernabeu faithful after the 3-2 win over Valencia last weekend.

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The full-back appeared as a substitute for Ronaldo for the final 11 minutes, as Real manager Zinedine Zidane decided to rest his superstar for the battles ahead, and if anything, the contrast with the Portuguese was an entirely apt one.

Arbeloa could never live up to the footballing talents of perhaps Madrid’s greatest player of all time, but what he did have was a heart as big as Ronaldo’s, and it is for that reason that he got so far in the game.

Having come up through the Castilla youth system and into a Real squad containing Zidane, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Luis Figo, David Beckham, Michael Owen and, er, Jonathan Woodgate for the 2004/05 campaign, Arbeloa was given a crash course in what it took to be a Real Madrid player—something that he wasn’t quite ready for.

He made four appearances that campaign, but after his skills were sharpened in half a season at Deportivo La Coruna, it wasn’t until a move to Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool in January 2007 that we began to see the real Arbeloa.

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Legandary Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard recently paid tribute to the full-back on Instagram, and Reds fans speak warmly of his time at Anfield, remembering his first start for the club when Benitez fielded him as a left-back in a UEFA Champions League tie against Barcelona in the Camp Nou, putting him in direct competition with a 19-year-old Lionel Messi.

Arbeloa defended superbly against the young magician, playing his part in Liverpool’s 2-1 success, which helped them on the road to the Athens final, where he appeared as a late substitute.

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And those 98 appearances over two-and-a-half years at Anfield were, arguably, what prepared Arbeloa for life back in Madrid, where he resurfaced again in the summer of 2009.

In hailing him this week, Real legend Iker Casillas appeared to make a nod to that spell, when he said, per MailOnline: “Alvaro was a product of the youth academy and had to go elsewhere to prove he had the necessary quality to return and play for Real Madrid.”

And that he certainly did.

In his second spell, Arbeloa was to play 233 times for the club, winning everything there was to win and solidifying his place in the Spain squad.

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Perhaps honed on Liverpool's Melwood training pitches with the likes of Gerrard and Jamie Carragher—with whom he once memorably had an on-pitch argument in a match at West Bromwich Albion—there was an “Englishness” to his play. A bite in the tackle and a steely determination to do whatever was necessary to keep a clean sheet or to win his side the match. Real Madrid fans responded to this.

Of course, such things are easier when you’re playing with the likes of Ronaldo, but Real fans saw one of their own in Arbeloa, the youngster who moved to the capital at the age of 18 after undergoing his initial football education at Real Zaragoza.

They paid tribute to him with a large banner at the Valencia game, saluting a player that Spanish football writer Graham Hunter believes they saw as "a warrior."

Per the Daily Record, Hunter wrote:

"

He’s been an armour-plated sword-wielding soldier since he was kid.

Of his childhood games of football in Zaragoza he recalls: “You went out to win by fair means or foul.

Nobody really worried about winning .

“Getting out of there alive was enough of an achievement in itself!”

"

How can you not warm to such a player, especially at a club like Madrid, where success seems to have come naturally to others?

Indeed, Arbeloa even appears to have bridged the Madrid-Barcelona divide, with none other than a man Madrid fans see as a pantomime villain, Gerard Pique, paying tribute to him, via Yahoo Sports:

"

I wish him the best wherever he goes next.

If they have given him a send-off like that, it is because he has deserved it. 

Sometimes the tone has been a bit too much and we shouldn't have done it. 

But he's had a great career with some big trophies, including the World Cup, and for wherever he goes I wish him well.

"

He might not be the flashiest of players to ever wear the white shirt, and he might not have sold as many of those shirts as others did, but they will miss him dearly in the Spanish capital.

There are very few like him left.