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Eight months ago, Sergio Ramos did not want to leave Real Madrid, and now, when he wanted to play again at the Santiago Bernabéu, he has not been able to do so.

So, he ended the season on the bench in the stands of Alfredo di Stéfano, injured.

This Wednesday, already enrolled in the ranks of Paris Saint-Germain, he will watch the game of his team against his former teammates from the stands of the Bernabéu, also due to an injury from which he has not yet fully recovered.

It is not the same mishap.

They are just two of a long series whose beginning can be placed on February 6 of last year, when they operated on the meniscus of his left knee.

Since then, he has played 547 minutes, in ten games: three with Real Madrid, two with the Spanish team and five with PSG.

"He is not desperate," say sources close to him.

"In 17 years of his career, something like this had never happened to him, but he has a strong head and is capable of overcoming it."

A PSG source speaks of a kind of controlled frustration: “Sergio is suffering”, he says, although he also rules out that the annoyance has led him to despair.

The endless chain of muscular injuries that has separated Ramos from the playing fields during the last year has also been mixed with the bitterness of an almost romantic break with the club where he played for 16 years, followed by a moving from country when he finished the works of his new house in Madrid.

The first days in Paris were spent staying with his family at the Le Royal Monceu hotel, where Leo Messi also slept a month later after signing with PSG.

It is the first official stop in the club, luxurious, although with some inconvenience from the point of view of the footballers: it is only 400 meters from the Arc de Triomphe and, after a few days, the players are bothered by the number of fans and tourists who wait for them at the door, and from there they try to follow them anywhere.

Ramos was taken out of there by Keylor Navas, a former teammate at Real Madrid and a close friend.

“He and Keylor are like brothers.

He acted as a kind of host for Sergio at the club, ”says a source close to the goalkeeper.

At first, Ramos settled in the Costa Rican's house, while his family returned to Madrid.

They wanted to find their definitive home before they all moved to Paris: his wife, Pilar Rubio, and her four children.

The search was not easy.

They were worried, above all, about the safety of the family, accustomed to the closed environment of La Moraleja.

They did not find anything similar in the French capital, and in the end they decided on a house in a town to the west of the city, far from Neuilly-sur-Seine, the Parisian neighborhood where another former Madrid teammate, Ángel di María, and several of the South Americans in the squad;

but close to the sports city, in Saint-Germain en Laye.

There he moved the hyperbaric chamber that he had in his home in Madrid and that he has been using for years to improve physical recovery.

And there he also installed a complete gym, where he has spent many hours to complement the work in the sports city and get back in shape after each relapse, the last one, the one that has prevented him from playing this Wednesday, in the right calf.

Painting and language classes

He has also taken oil paintings and canvases to his Parisian home, one of his last hobbies, which began in part to appease the adrenaline that did not let him sleep after games, as he recounted in the second season of the Amazon documentary series : “Painting is something that has always fascinated me, especially in recent years,” he says.

“I like to learn and I like to see an evolution.

I don't want to prove anything to anyone.

I don't care what they say.

I don't care or seek an opinion.

I paint to disconnect, to escape.

And I seek to rediscover myself with moments of solitude”.

He recently shared on Instagram a short video in his studio about which he wrote: "Everyone spends the afternoon as he wants."

Others are spent with daily English classes and somewhat less frequent French classes.

Almost everyone speaks Spanish in the PSG dugout, so he doesn't feel as much of an urge to learn the local language.

Although what he still has above all in his head, according to sources in his environment, is to add more titles.

Not even a hint of temptation to retreat.

For that, he has found in Paris a buddy unimagined a few months ago.

"He has landed on his feet with Messi," says a source with access to the PSG dressing room.

Both have crossed paths just after leaving the club they were captains for years and they know they share goals, says a source close to Ramos.

What they have not been able to share for the moment is a lot of time in the field.

During the games in the Parc des Princes, their children mingle more, since the Messi and Ramos boxes are located next door.

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