Third footballer with the most titles (22) in the history of Real Madrid, after Gento and Marcelo (23). Captain for six of the 16 seasons that he wore the white jersey. Hero of the Décima and, surely, the best defense in the history of the club. In addition, world champion, and twice in Europe, with Spain. Sergio Ramos' list of merits is enviable and endless. We are talking about one of the greatest legends of Madrid and the national team. A giant athlete whose epilogue is far from the one expected by him or by the millions of fans he has around the world. “He is not comfortable in Paris. He was the leader and the reference of the Real dressing room
Madrid, and now he is one more in PSG”, a person very close to Sergio explained to ABC.
Frustration is one of the states of mind that the Andalusian defense has experienced the most in the last seven months. Sergio Ramos has not yet forgotten his departure from Real Madrid. Among his closest circle, he continues to argue that he did not renew for the white club because Florentino did not want it that way. There will never be a single bad word towards his former president, because there really is affection and admiration, but it will be difficult for someone to take away the idea that Florentino himself could have avoided his. A script twist in his career, just at the most delicate moment of it, when his enviable physique collapsed with hitherto invisible cracks.
Ramos, the day of his presentation with PSG – REUTERS
loss of status
Since January 14, 2021, when Real Madrid was eliminated by Athletic in the semifinals of the Spanish Super Cup, Sergio Ramos has only played 438 minutes: four with the national team, 151 with Madrid and 283 minutes with PSG. Thirteen months in which he has gone from being one of the best defenders in the world to one more player in elite football. From white to black in just over a year. An easy blow of assimilation and management for those who have lasted so many years have been on the crest of the wave. His arrival in Paris provided a firewall from his disappointing last six months at Madrid, but far from setting his course straight, Ramos has continued to lose status and notoriety. “He maintains contact with his closest friends here, who are actually a few, not many. As soon as he learned of Gento's death, he contacted the club to convey his sorrow and condolences to him, but his world has changed. He is the first one who knew that he had to step aside and move away. He is no longer present in the locker room. That is how he wants it and that is how it should be”, they explain in Valdebebas. Ramos left with the idea of healing the wound and starting from scratch in Paris, but that has not been possible yet.
Until there he took his four children and his partner, Pilar Rubio. Not without her little trauma. Last year, they finally moved into the house they built from scratch in La Moraleja. Two years of work and around 5 million euros invested Sergio and Pilar in their luxurious villa, but they didn't even have time to taste it. The move to Paris took him by surprise and, in the blink of an eye, he had to change all the logistics of a family of six members, four of them of school age. In the French capital, you live in the exclusive area of Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the banks of the Seine River, where colleagues like Icardi, Marquinhos or Di María also reside.
Since landing in Paris, he has received English classes, they have escaped from the loud noise that their life generates in the premium gym that they have set up in their own home, and they try to get involved in Parisian social life, as happened a month ago when they went to the Paris Fashion Week to follow the Louis Vuitton fashion show on site. Fashion is one of the many hobbies that Sergio and Pilar share. There his reference is Beckham, who also played for Madrid and PSG: "I maintain the elegance of his style," he confesses. As for French cuisine, crepes are his favorite dish, and he claims to be in love with “the essence of Paris, its monuments and museums”, but he has not yet been able to see the Eiffel Tower first-hand: “I have been there, but I didn't upload it."
Ramos, during a training session in his recently opened gym in Madrid
It won't be for lack of planes, but that doesn't mean he has found the comfort in Paris that he did have in Madrid. The distance from friends and family does not help. Pilar does travel to Madrid at least once a week, where she continues with her usual collaboration in 'El Hormiguero de' Pablo Motos, a close friend of the couple, but Sergio barely has time. Only the opening of her latest business, 'Sergio Ramos by John Reed', a modern and avant-garde gym located in the Moncloa interchange, has made her return to the Spanish capital on a couple of occasions. “The comfort that she had in Madrid she does not have in Paris”, she tells her circle. When he was a white player, Ramos took advantage of some of his days off to travel on his private jet to Seville, where he also has different business fronts open, in addition to his group of childhood friends. As long as he is in Paris, it is impossible.
Neither termination nor withdrawal
Nor does he have the harmony that he would like in his day to day at PSG. Injuries have continued to plague him, and he has not found solutions in the English club's medical staff: "Different physios treat him, something that is not to his liking and, furthermore, he does not trust them". There is also no 'feeling' with Pochettino: 'He doesn't get along with him'. It is not that there is a bad relationship or that they are in conflict, Ramos simply has not found in the Argentine the chemistry that he did have with most of his coaches in Madrid.
The environment of PSG and the French media do not add to this gray scenario of Ramos in Paris either. His numerous physical problems have even provoked significant criticism from the press more related to PSG and, last November, there was talk of contract termination. But the siege has not stopped there. In recent weeks there has been speculation about his withdrawal, something that his environment categorically denies.
What cannot be denied is that his abrupt departure from the national team, with his shocking non-call for last year's European Championship – a decision that resulted in a tense telephone conversation with Luis Enrique – was another blow that did not enter into his plans. Still, Ramos does not give up. He hopes to return to the situation at PSG as soon as possible and sow the seed that the returnee has the selection. The challenge of his fifth World Cup is still alive: “For me it is a tremendous pride to represent my country and wear the Spain shirt, with the shield and my number. Hopefully I can keep doing it." At the moment, he plays for Madrid, although he will have to experience it from the stands.
