SERGIO RAMOS: BORN INSIDE THE BIG GAME

Only a few footballers will ever be called great; and almost none of those will have resembled so many other greats so much as Sergio Ramos. Ramos, the soul of Real Madrid – the mere word “captain” does not do him justice – is his own man, yet is also reminiscent of so many who have gone before him. Like Fernando Hierro, he is the sneering strongman with the knack for vital goals. Like John Terry, his is the face that opposition fans are most likely to wear as a Hallowe’en mask. Like Lilian Thuram, he is a defender of staggeringly diverse gifts, at once one of the best right-backs and the best centre-backs in world football. Like Dani Alves, he swaggered down the flank for Sevilla before going on to become one of the emblems of his team. Like Gerard Pique, he strikes you as the kind of man who swears an oath to his club each night before bed.
Ramos is all of that, and more. He’s probably the best-looking elite defender the game has seen this side of Paolo Maldini (wait, as I type, I can hear Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund fans bleating the case for Pique and Marc Bartra): he combines sublime technique with the features of Keanu Reeves. He’s the kind of human who should be the subject of supreme envy, but I can’t bring myself to be jealous of him. Being Ramos seems like it would be stressful for anyone but Ramos. Walking a few miles in his shoes, or strutting a few yards in his boots, would be like stepping off a sidewalk into the cockpit of a speeding dragster. Ramos’ career is a thing of extremes; were his playing style best embodied by a musician, then it would be Keith Richards. Red and yellow cards litter his career as liberally as confetti at a trophy parade. Meanwhile, expressions of despair and delight at yet another of his career-defining strikes frequently tumble across Twitter.

His achievements are astonishing. The youngest player to collect 100 caps for his country – a race in which he beat even fellow prodigy and Madrid legend Iker Casillas – he was a mainstay of a Spain side that won three consecutive international tournaments, the Euros in 2008 and 2012 and the World Cup in 2014. He has netted in two UEFA Champions League finals when his team needed him most, a record of which most forwards would be proud. Other players turn up for big games; Ramos seems to have been born in them.

As mentioned, he has experienced more than a little turbulence along the way. The most vivid of these moments was the 2012 UEFA Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich, when he slashed a penalty high over the bar. Yet only a few months later, he not only volunteered for an equally important opportunity – in a shootout against Portugal, in the quarter-finals of the European Championships – but he calmly chipped the goalkeeper from the spot. Looking beyond his skill, looking past his histrionics – difficult as the latter may be – what makes Ramos one of the finest footballers ever is his embrace of adversity. While some players hide from danger, Ramos buys it a round of drinks.

Like David Beckham, another footballer who could just as easily have spent his year sauntering down a catwalk, maybe Ramos initially faced the perception that he was too pretty to play the game. If so, then a few of his challenges, with his feet whirring furiously as chainsaws, would quickly have removed that view. Sir Alex Ferguson once wrote that “’when the chips are down on the football field, you can bet your life that David Beckham won’t be found wanting”, and the same is true for Ramos.

The defender has also led a remarkable turnaround in Madrid’s fortunes. Just five years ago, they looked as if they were going to take a back seat to Barcelona’s brilliance for the next decade. Now they have claimed three UEFA Champions League titles in four years, as well as being the first side to retain the trophy. Meanwhile, Barcelona’s squad is desperate for depth, and Ramos is still only 31, with his desire for success apparently nowhere near sated. In Europe, Madrid have had two prior Golden Ages – the 1950s, and the period between 1998 and 2002, when they were the continent’s champions eight times – and now, largely thanks to Ramos, they are firmly in the middle of another. Along the way, Ramos has seen off the hopes of both fellow dynasties, such as Juventus and Bayern Munich, and wild-eyed romantics, such as Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid. His success has become as inevitable as the bruality of the Berlin winter. It is fitting that the football career of a man with both the looks and the appetite for risk of a young casino owner should prove the gambler’s immortal rule: “the house always wins.”