Sergio Ramos: Dominator with scratches

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Sergio Ramos

Photo: Manu Fernandez / AP

The week went a little differently than Sergio Ramos had imagined.

Last Wednesday in the Netherlands, of course, he was substituted in for a meaningless five minutes in a friendly match in order to overtake previous European record holder Gigi Buffon with his 176th international match.

And logically, since Saturday in Basel he holds the sole record with 177 appearances.

But on the historic day of all things, he missed a penalty.

Not one, two.

He was completely dismantled in the mind game by the Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer.

A hint from football that you can overdo it with the personality cult?

It wouldn't be the first.

It was not even two years ago that Ramos deliberately received a warning in the Champions League in the last 16 first leg in Amsterdam, because he saw his Real Madrid with a 2-1 in the next round and through a suspension in the second match wanted to zero his card account.

For the second leg he asked film people to come to the stadium box to capture pictures for the documentary "The Heart of Sergio Ramos".

With the score at 0: 3 in the second half, he recognized the moment to ask her home.  

The day before the decisive Nations League game against Germany in Seville, it was actually announced to the press.

As the highlight of the Ramos Festival, he should have spoken about his heroics in his footballing hometown, including his 100th goal for Real, which he recently scored.

Last but not least, affine observers were hoping for some news on the tiresome subject of his contract extension.

But if that was really a hint from football in Basel, then 34-year-old Ramos understood it.

He canceled the audience at short notice.

Restraint is not the easiest exercise for him.

On the pitch, in addition to the most international matches or 25 converted penalties in a row up to Basel, he also has the most dismissals (26).

At best, defensive icons like Franz Beckenbauer or Ronald Koeman had as much influence as Ramos in so many areas of the pitch.

In Basel, he provoked the first penalty himself after he had prevented a goal on his own line a minute earlier.

In the end, he shot seven times on goal, as often as all of Switzerland, he, a defender.

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With Spain Ramos was twice European and once world champion

Photo: Manu Fernandez / AP

In addition to the square, everything is "larger than life" for him, bigger than life.

Not only tattoos, mountains of muscles and its fashionable transformations - currently: hipsters / Neanderthals - are to be mentioned.

Not just celebrity gossip from the marriage with a well-known TV presenter or faux pas like the thing with the Spanish water polo players, whom he congratulated three weeks too late for their World Cup victory because he had just seen their final, unknowingly only in the repeat.

No, Ramos is also a horse breeder and art collector, with a work by Banksy as his greatest pride.

At Real Madrid, nothing worked recently without the captain.

Atmospherically, he holds the store together and in terms of sport, the statistics are beyond doubt: only one of the last twelve Champions League games with Ramos was lost, but six of the last seven without him. 

Accordingly, the media are now panicking about the haggling over his future.

His contract expires in summer, and he can negotiate freely from January.

Real is actually only extending years with players of his age and refers to the Covid crisis in relation to his wish for a salary increase.

"It belongs on the Real Madrid coat of arms," ​​pleaded the prominent "Ace" columnist Tomás Roncero for generosity. 

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Ramos has won 22 titles with Real Madrid, including four times the Champions League

Photo: Michael Regan / Getty Images

On the other hand, the cult of Ramos is of course also a symptom of crisis.

At Real as in the national team - if such a thing is done around a 34-year-old defender, it is also because otherwise there isn't so much going on.

In Spain, Ramos took over the captaincy from Iker Casillas in 2016.

There have been no successes since then.

At the chaotic World Cup in 2018, he was even said to have a harmful number of matches.

Ramos got through that the players no longer had to appear in the team quarters for breakfast, which led to nightly gaming orgies.

In order to allow discipline to prevail again instead of Dolce Vita, the association then hired the coach Luis Enrique, who is known for his strong character.

Many anticipated a clash, but the opposite has happened: the two alpha animals get along very well.

Luis Enrique has known contemporary Staregos at least since a lost power struggle with Lionel Messi as Barça coach, and so he willingly gives the accomplice in Ramos' record hunt with various test game substitutions.

The world best of the Egyptian Ahmed Hassan stands at 184. Ramos wants to continue until the World Cup in Qatar, he could easily reach 200. 

In important games such as against Germany (8.45 p.m., live ticker: SPIEGEL.de) he is set anyway, and without wanting to anticipate the events: a penalty and thus a duel with Manuel Neuer, that would really be the perfect punchline of the week.

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Real is great with Ramos, but vulnerable without him

Photo: Alvaro Barrientos / AP

His penalty fetish finally began with Neuer.

In the 2012 Champions League semifinals, Ramos, who was not a regular shooter at the time, tried to hit the stands of Madrid's Bernabéu on penalties, whereupon Neuer joked in his analysis of the real shooters: "I didn't know that Ramos preferred to shoot over it."

After Bayern's subsequent defeat in the final, the Spaniard blasphemed back: "I didn't know that the finals were so good for Neuer."

Ramos felt challenged.

Setbacks don't make someone like him smaller, they make them bigger.

He not only decided to keep taking penalties now.

But also to double the stake and perform the Panenka lob at the next opportunity.

In the shootout of the EM semi-final against Portugal in 2012, the time had come.

Ramos scored and has successfully repeated the Panenka many times since. 

Until Sommer downright hypnotized him on his second attempt in Basel.

As in a role reversal, it was the goalkeeper who deceived and tricked - and the shooter who surrendered in dismay.

Is there a trauma lurking there? 

Maybe we will see it today.

Because he couldn't quite stop it, Ramos commented on an association video on Monday evening.

Of course he'll take the next penalty, he says in the team hotel high above Seville: "If I didn't take it this way, I would in a way no longer be me."

Icon: The mirror