Espanyol striker Raul de Tomas admits he has regrets over his time with Real Madrid.

De Tomas came through the youth system at Real Madrid ahead of establishing himself with the Castilla team.

Now enjoying his first Spain call-up, De Tomas reflected: "When we are young we make mistakes, we believe things that we are not, we want to go faster than we have to go. Now when I see 16, 17 and 18 year old boys I wonder if I was like that.

"I think they are wrong and maybe I was wrong at that age. It is a period that you have to go through to learn and when you are 27 years old you realise that you should not have done certain things. The problem would be doing those things at 27 years old. I don't regret it, but I did learn from the mistakes I made, which didn't help me to play for Real Madrid. But I had the opportunity to be there and decided to go out to play."

Asked about a return to Real Madrid, he continued: "I focus on the day to day and you never know. I have grown up since I was little in Madrid, since I was 8 years old and you never know.

"It is a dream to return to Madrid because I grew up there, from the age of eight I entered through the door of the Real Madrid Sports City. Everyone has this dream of going back to where you grew up. Why not? You never know."