Casillas renews 2002 World Cup conspiracy, says European teams were harmed

Theory Briefing

• Casillas, who played in the 2002 World Cup, publicly renewed the old conspiracy that European sides were harmed by unfair officiating at that tournament.
• The 2002 Korea–Japan World Cup has long been a flashpoint for refereeing controversy, with several high-profile European eliminations still disputed decades later.
• Revisiting a decades-old grievance shows how a disputed result can harden into collective memory, with each retelling reinforcing the belief rather than testing it.
• No new evidence is cited — the story's power comes from a famous name re-legitimising a long-standing narrative.