What Sergio Ramos has done for Real Madrid and for Spain has been historic, and he’s not even finished yet. Ramos will leave a multi-layered legacy behind him. Every football almanac will list him as a centre-back, but few fans will remember the player for his defending. Instead, it will be his last-minute goals, his captaincy, his off-the-field antics, and most importantly, his memory that will survive in the memory for decades.
“¡¡Que huevos tiene Rrrrraaaaaamoooooooossss!!” “What balls Rrrrraaaaaamoooooooossss has!” The Spanish commentary team cannot believe what La Roja’s centre-back has just done. Just 63 days after he penetrated the ozone layer above the Iberian Peninsula with his penalty kick in the Champions League semi-final shootout defeat to Bayern Munich, Ramos assumed the responsibility of taking a spot-kick again.
If anything the stakes were even higher, as Spain chased what would be a historic international treble and found themselves a shootout away from the Euro 2012 final. In front of him stood Portugal’s Rui Patrício, but Ramos showed zero fear and infinite boyish boldness, executing a perfect Panenka penalty to nudge La Roja one step closer to the final.
To understand the significance of Ramos’ chutzpah, it’s necessary to understand just how much ridicule was directed his way after that Champions League failure. Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká had also missed penalties against Bayern that evening, but the ire of the Real Madrid fans and the mockery of the rest of Europe was reserved for the centre-back. It was partly because his attempt was the worst of the evening – by several metres – and partly because his came at the most crucial stage of the shootout, yet it was pretty unfair that Ramos was made to feel like the sole scapegoat.
There was nothing he could do to stop the jokes, and the memes and it hit Ramos hard; he’s admitted so. But he did all he could to move on, even cutting off his long hair in a coming-of-age scene that, with the addition of some dramatic music, would make a good montage in the movie of Ramos’ life. He also planned his comeback, deciding to double down on his penalty failure. ‘Go big or go home,’ he thought.
“I had it all planned out because of the pain of the semi-final against Bayern,” he explained after the Euro 2012 match. “It wasn’t so much that I missed against Bayern, but the fact that people immediately questioned my will or my ability to face that responsibility and to triumph. My pride was stung, so I decided right then to demonstrate in style that they were all wrong.”
As much as Ramos knew he was going to take a Panenka penalty against Portugal if afforded the opportunity, he didn’t practice it beforehand, aware that doing so in the training session on the eve of the semi-final would alert the media – and Patrício – to his intentions. Instead, he just trusted his ability, sussed out Patrício, and converted.
That is pure Sergio Ramos. When all of the marbles are on the line, Ramos takes the biggest risks, a very un-centre-back-ish trait. He is the kid who packs his cheeks with Mentos and takes a swig of Diet Coke, purely to see if something cool will happen. He showed that a few years after his Euro 2012 exploits when he repeated his Panenka trick in his home city of Seville, arguably an even harsher environment.
Ever since his €27m transfer from Sevilla to Real Madrid in 2005, the defender has been public enemy number one at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán. It was on the final day of his first Real Madrid season that Ramos returned to his former club and he did so to a chorus of boos, whistles and chants of “Sergio Ramos, son of a bitch”.
The hostility he faced had only grown and grown in the decade since, so when he returned for a Copa del Rey match in January 2017, and when Los Blancos won a penalty late in the game which would seal their passage and snuff out any chance of a comeback, the now-Real Madrid captain stepped up to the spot and produced another Panenka. Immediately he cupped his ears in the direction of the Sevilla ultras – the Biris Norte – right behind the goal. It was 3-2 on the scoreboard, but it was 1-0 to Ramos in his personal battle with the locals. Had he missed this unnecessarily cocky attempt, however, then Ramos would never have heard the end of it.
But that’s the beauty of Ramos’ audacity, the fact that he doesn’t consider failure as a possibility. When he made that high-profile move from Sevilla to Real Madrid, there were huge expectations and he had set them for himself. Ever since Joaquín Caparrós gave him his Sevilla debut in the 64th minute of a match away at Deportivo in 2004, he demanded that he dominate each and every game, which Albert Luque quickly found out when the 17-year-old in a baggy number 35 shirt won the ball with a crunching slide tackle just minutes after beginning his professional career.
The next step was to move north to the capital and to the Santiago Bernabéu, a daunting prospect for most 19-year-olds, but a challenge which Ramos faced head on, even requesting the legendary Fernando Hierro’s number 4 shirt. That was quite a jersey to fill, but no challenge is too grand for this man.
In the years since, Ramos has shown that he did indeed have what it took to inherit Hierro’s shirt and has since matched his haul of three Champions League medals. Now he’s setting his sights even higher and he genuinely believes he could win a Ballon d’Or before hanging up his boots, pointing to the precedent of his friend Fabio Cannavaro, the last defender to claim that honour. “I do not view it as crazy for me to win the Ballon d’Or,” Ramos said. Most people would, but Ramos’ confidence knows no boundaries.