All hail Sergio Ramos, god of cynical fouls

Sergio Ramos being carded: what is more typical in football? The only surprising part about him being sent off against Manchester City for pulling back Gabriel Jesus when the forward was through on goal was that it was just the fourth time it has happened in Champions League play. Ramos is the god of cards, the living spirit of cautions, the embodiment of cynical fouls.

Four red cards in the Champions League for Ramos is almost unbelievable. The number seems disrespectfully small. And yet, he’s now tied with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edgar Davids for the most ever in the competition.

That company doesn’t suit him. Ibrahimovic and Davids are amateurs when it comes to being cautioned on the field. Ramos is the master. He’s the most carded player in both La Liga and Champions League, with more than 200 yellow cards across all competitions, and now 26 reds. That latter total is the third most ever, one behind Cyril Rool and 20 (!) behind Gerardo Bedoya.

The true comedy of Ramos’ expansive history of fouls and dismissals is he is always incredulous when he gets sent off. Never once does he believe he deserves the card.

When I saw the foul against Jesus, it felt eerily familiar. It was almost the same exact foul he committed against Barcelona in 2014, when he pulled back Neymar as the Brazilian made his way into the box. Both times, he tried to put the Brazilian in question off balance. The idea was to do enough to stop the shot to come without alerting the referee to a foul. Both times the attackers exaggerated, fell, and indicted Ramos because they understand his game as much as he does. And in both cases, Ramos looked at the referee in disbelief afterwards, shaking his head and walking away in disgust as if the referee could not be more wrong.

He is Ramos the innocent; Ramos the clean and honest. He leaves the field as if he sincerely believes that there’s a conspiracy against him.

Those two sending offs are somewhat understandable, in the sense that Ramos was desperate. Most defenders in his position would do the sensible thing and let the striker have a shot on goal, knowing it’s better to concede and stay on the field than to risk a penalty or a red card, especially when your team is losing. Not Ramos. He is a man of action. He must do something if he can. It is his job, but also his character.

And in his character, as well, are the less unfortunate fouls. Ramos is an enforcer. He likes to hurt his opponents. He intimidates them and makes sure that their time against him is as painful and distressing as possible. Against Ramos, there is no time for a good time. He elbows, pushes, and, as the saying goes, leaves something extra in his tackles.

Ramos has been sent off for kicking out, elbowing opponents in the head, pushing someone in the face, going through the back of players’ legs, and for stamping on a forward’s chest while they were on the ground. We also can’t forget he was suspended for two games for deliberately getting a yellow card against Ajax last season, in order to trigger an automatic one-game European suspension and clear his booking slate for the Champions League quarterfinals. Madrid would go on to lose the second leg of the matchup.

I don’t point all this out to condemn Ramos. He is one of a kind, an irreplaceable legend in the game. He might be painful to play against, but he is fascinating to watch. When he was younger, it seemed the constant cards would threaten his career and undercut his obvious talent. The logic went that he would eventually have to rein in the behavior that constantly led him into confrontations with the referee. He didn’t. Instead, he made no compromises, embraced that dark side of himself, and became one of the greatest and most accomplished defenders to ever play the game. A Madrid game doesn’t even feel complete, win or lose, without at least one Ramos yellow card.

The most infamous incident from Madrid’s 2018 Champions League final win over Liverpool was a collision between Mo Salah and Ramos, in which it looked as if Ramos pulled and fell on Salah’s arm as they fell to the ground. Ramos wasn’t carded, and Salah had to be substituted.

Afterwards, there were arguments about why Ramos wasn’t cautioned, and whether Ramos fouled Salah intentionally. For anyone else, the incident might have been passed off as an accident. But because Ramos was involved, there was more than a hint of suspicion that it wasn’t an innocent coincidence. It felt, in some way, like Ramos got away with one.

That’s the experience of watching Ramos, an incredible defender who lives on the legal edge. He is perpetually on a yellow, and yet he frequently gets away pulling, pushing, and hurting his opponents.

In the end, Ramos is dangerous. The problem is one can never tell which way that danger is pointed. Maybe he will score a tower header to win the game, after bruising everyone who comes near him. Or maybe he will put in an excellent performance, only to cynically spoil it. There is no other way he can exist. Chaos is who he is.