Matador finally ready for the kill

Sergio Ramos is Real Madrid’s most interesting player.

He’s full of contradictions.

He’s physically brave, but prone to feigning injury. He’s a natural leader, but capable of idiotic verbal blunders, which have made him a laughing stock amongst Spain’s public.

A couple of summers ago, for example, he tweeted excitedly that he was in New York at the Yankee stadium: “What a spectacular city!”

Attached to his tweet was a picture of Las Vegas.

Real Madrid’s 4-0 away thumping of Bayern Munich in the Champions League last month, in a city in which the club had only managed one draw in 10 previous visits, captured something of the enigma of Ramos.

His two headed goals from set pieces decided the tie. He was a match winner with not even 20 minutes on the clock.

Fifteen minutes later, knowing that if he picked up another yellow card in the tournament, it would rule him out of the final, he ploughed through Philipp Lahm close to the corner flag like a JCB. It was a mystery he didn’t get a booking for the challenge. It was an extraordinary, but characteristic moment of recklessness. He’s racked up 19 red cards during his career with Real Madrid, more than any player in the club’s history.

His rise has been meteoric. He was only 19 when Real Madrid shelled out a reported €27m to lure him from Sevilla, the team his family supports. He had already been capped by Spain a year earlier.

Last year, he became the youngest player to surpass the 100-mark for international caps.

Ramos has been a lynchpin of Spain’s triple-winning international team over the last six years. He entered the Euro 2012 tournament bickering with Piqué, a rift that festered during their clubs’ ugly rivalry, but the pair set aside their differences for the greater good of la roja. Ramos also exorcised a ghost when it came to penalties against Portugal in the tournament’s semi-final.

Two months earlier, he ballooned Real Madrid’s fourth spot kick over the bar against Bayern Munich in the penalty shootout that led to his side tumbling out at the semi-final stage of the Champions League. He was lambasted for the miss. That night he told his father and René, his brother and agent, that he’d score with ‘a panenka’ when next on penalty taking duty. “That’ll shut them up,” he vowed.

During the ensuing Euros, he was unable to practise the scooping penalty style in training because he was afraid it would be caught on camera. Vicente del Bosque, Spain’s manager was convinced he wouldn’t dare attempt it, but he did, and it worked. Imagine the self-confidence required to chip the ball delicately into the middle of the goal during a penalty shoot-out a European Championship semi-final?

During the fractious years of José Mourinho’s three-year reign at Real Madrid, Ramos was a consistent critic, although he bit his tongue in public – repeatedly peddling a line in press exchanges that the Portuguese was “a fantastic coach” and the club was “lucky” to have him.

Behind closed doors, however, he spoke candidly to club president Florentino Pérez (and to Mourinho’s face) when canvassed about the manager’s shortcomings, when often Iker Casillas, the club’s other most senior player, chose to just ignore Mourinho.

Real Madrid’s players used to joke that they could forecast Mourinho’s mood based on the front-page covers of AS and Marca, the city’s two sports dailies.

If a picture of Ramos or Casillas adorned their covers, it would be “cold, with rain probable” for the day.

Ramos had a training ground set-to with Mourinho in January 2012, closing out their bust-up with a withering dig at Mourinho’s failed career as a player: “As you have never been a player, you wouldn’t know that this is sometimes necessary.”

Mourinho dropped Ramos later that year for a Champions League tie with Manchester City at the Bernabéu for insubordination, but Ramos had the final word. When Pérez polled the squad’s players in April 2013 about whether to keep Mourinho, who was contracted until 2016, Ramos was one of 15 players from 22 who called for Mourinho’s head, and he was one of only six, according to El País, who requested a transfer if Mourinho remained.

Mourinho left the club a few weeks later, having lost three Champions League semi-finals in a row. La decima, Real Madrid’s tenth European Cup win, the club’s great obsession, had eluded him.

The Champions League trophy is the only piece of silverware missing from Ramos’s trophy cabinet.

If he puts that right on Saturday, watch him fetch a matador’s cape on the field afterwards for a trademark celebration as he apes a matador’s passes. He’s a born killer.