Sergio Ramos bares striker's soul to leave Barcelona on ropes in title race

It was time, Ramos time. In fact, if anything, he was a little early. The clock had reached 89 minutes in the first clásico of the season and Barcelona were winning 1-0, Madrid’s lead at the top reduced to three points, game on again, and Luka Modric was standing by the ball out on the left where Arda Turan had gifted them one last chance, the kind of moment this man is made for. Thirty yards away, Sergio Ramos nodded “over here” at him, eyebrows, eyes and head gesturing surreptitiously. At least he hoped it was surreptitious. As he took up his position – offside for now, ready to step back on – Gerard Piqué watched him and tracked him, or tried to; in Piqué’s way was Lucas Vázquez, pushing, diverting, annoying.

High on the other side, in the box hung from the roof, someone said: “They’ll score here.” “Yeah, Ramos,” came the reply. Ramos later said: “I told Luka: ‘you put in a good one and I’ll put it away’,” which was pretty much what happened. “He told me where to put it, I put it there, he scored. Easy, huh?” Modric laughed. The clock said 89.46 when he put in a good one – “for a change,” according to Ramos and 89.48 when Madrid’s captain put it away, heading past Marc-André ter Stegen. Arms out, he raced them all to the corner where players piled on in white, Keylor Navas close behind in yellow. Dani Carvajal flipped the finger at the fans in front – sorry, he later said – and fists were raised to the 800 supporters way above, going wild behind that grubby glass screen.

As Ramos ran back, he did an I’ll-call-you-later gesture. He’d call to say Madrid had done it; they’d rescued a point, kept the run going, the record still on, and restored their six-point lead at the top. A victory would have been a “fist on the desk”, Lucas had said; with the equaliser, they delivered a blow too. “If we’d lost, it would have been hard,” Zinedine Zidane admitted; instead they got a result, a performance, that that Modric said “is like a victory” and Lucas insisted “breeds confidence”. How could it not when they’ve now gone 33 unbeaten? “That’s not chance,” Modric said.

“Does this taste like a victory?” Zidane was asked. “No,” he said, “it’s just one point.” But to others it did, and it was more than one point: it was the one Madrid earned, the two Barcelona didn’t, and, for now at least, the head-to-head advantage as well. Nor was this just about the stats; it was about the sensations. This clásico was to be celebrated – for what it did for them and what it did to Barcelona: “hard to take,” Andrés Iniesta called it. In the Madrid dressing room, they embraced and posed for a photo, wearing flip flops and towels, Ramos flexing a tattooed arm, Cristiano Ronaldo sitting there, an hmmm on his face, one hand on his chin, the other on some part of him hidden behind Pepe’s head. Ramos posted it with the message: “Right to the end, always.” On his ribs, a tattoo in English, borrowed from Nelson Mandela declaring himself an “unconquered soul, master of my own destiny.”

Master of Madrid’s too. In Marca, Roberto Palomar said the final score had
been Vulgarity 1 - 1 Miracles. In AS, Santi Giménez likened it to a flatline; “it was played at 4.15 for the Asian audience and after this badminton will continue to be their leading sport,” he wrote. Those were exaggerations, and there was enjoyment in watching Modric and Iniesta especially, while Sergio Busquets, Ramos, Raphaël Varane, Marcelo and Lucas stood out, and although it rarely flowed there were moments. Tension, too; uncertainty. This was not a classic clásico, no, but it was a competitive one, a contest, and it did have that finale.

Madrid perhaps should have led by half-time – should have had a penalty or two as well. When Barcelona did lead, Luis Suárez scoring a 53rd-minute header and Iniesta returning from injury six minutes after that, they refound themselves, the pitch tilting the other way. Neymar, Iniesta and Lionel Messi all had opportunities. Both Catalan papers led on the same front page headline: Barcelona had “pardoned” their rivals, while Luis Enrique said: “We had it in our hands, but couldn’t finish it.” Then they got caught but the Barcelona manager insisted: “it’s not justice or injustice, it’s putting the ball in the goal.” From Madrid’s point of view, it was justice: they deserved the draw, or more. It looked like they would be denied it; Barcelona were within touching distance of the victory that would have changed the way this title race felt, and then it changed back again. They had been close, and then Ramos arrived.

“I’m not surprised; that’s Ramos, it’s what he has: personality,” Zidane said. “In games like this, he is always there.” He certainly is. There’s something about Sergio. Something it’s hard not to warm to. Captain, action man, daft at times, almost comically heroic, there’s something a little playful about him, chaotic too at times, even outright bad occasionally, and there’s a reason why he has more red cards than anyone else in history, and it’s not really the refs, but he’s built with an innate ability to come good when it really, really matters. Like on Saturday night when he committed no fouls, made no mistakes, and completed all but one of his passes. When he then then scored the goal, which is very much his way.

Over a decade at Madrid, Ramos has had his cheerleaders but he has also faced criticism and it has been fierce at times, pointed and political too – “when you get hit here, you get hit hard,” he says – but he wins them over in the end. The End being the right words. The fondness felt by team-mates is real, not least because there’s an honesty and directness about him that they admire. And because while he sometimes leaves them in it, he also has a habit of riding to their rescue. “Somehow, he always finds a way to be there in the end,” Varane said. “You can rely on Serge,” Gareth Bale tweeted. They’ve seen this before. The goal came in “the ninety-Ramos minute,” Marca’s cover said. The clásico is Ramos,” AS claimed. It was unbelievable . yet so very believable too.

Ramos has always been a little different; you’ve got at admire his balls. And but for a strategically placed pair of boots hanging from his neck, you almost could too: aged nineteen, still at Sevilla, he posed nearly nude for the football magazine Don Balón, standing there looking all gladiatorial, Roman nose and all. So very Ramos. His hair was long then – modelled, he admits, on his hero Claudio Caniggia. Yes, that Claudio Caniggia. He liked Rivaldo and Hugo Almeida too, drawn to mavericks and forwards more than centre-backs. He is the defender who admits to getting a bit “bored” at the back and says he has a “striker’s soul.”

“When you’re growing up, everyone plays up front, everyone wants to score goals,” Ramos says. He still does. Not long after the 2010 World Cup, he was interviewed for a documentary on success in South Africa, as were all of his international team-mates. Spain were world champions, everyone was delighted, talking about this historic moment, about happiness and joy. But Ramos admitted that, actually, there was something missing for him: a goal. He has referred to a tournament tinged with a “touch of sadness”, to having endured a “goalscoring drought” at Euro 2008 and South Africa 2010 – where, he regretfully recalled, “I had three great chances to score in the final.” As it turned out, the goals weren’t long coming. In finals, too. Ramos has scored 62 for Madrid, more than any defender currently playing. And it’s not the number, either; it’s what they meant. The way he scored them; when he scored them. Luck, some sneer, but it has happened too often for it to be just luck. Two years later, when Spain next found themselves at a major tournament, the 2012 European Championships in Poland and the Ukraine, where they were victorious again, he scored a penalty in the shootout at the end of the semi-final, Panenka-style, just two-months after missing in the semi-final of the Champions League. Olé your balls, they said.

That was just the start. Another of his tattoos reads 92.48, the exact time that his header hit the net against Alético Madrid in the European Cup final in Lisbon. Modric put in a good one and Ramos put it away that night too, another last-minute equaliser that felt like a winner. He had scored twice in Munich to take them there in the first place: a centre-back can rarely have been as influential as he was for the final two months of the 2013-14.

The truth is, he had endured a difficult time at the start of last season – and he had been close to leaving for Manchester United in the summer, a long, tense, emotional, argumentative meeting in China that ran on for hours finally ending that particular saga – but by the end of it he was leading again. Writing in El Mundo this weekend, Jamie Rodríguez tells the story of the last clásico, back in April. At half-time, Ramos asked Zidane to give them a moment alone. Everyone left the dressing room except the players: coaches, physios, staff, all gone. Ramos spoke. Madrid won 2-1. The following game they were beaten by Wolfsburg, true, but they have not been beaten since. They turned round the 2-0 deficit against the Germans, beat Manchester City, and reached another European Cup final. There, Ramos scored again. Twice, in fact: Madrid’s only goal of the game and, having dived to stop Yannick Ferreira Carrasco breaking free in the last minute, sending him crashing to the floor, the fourth penalty in the shootout. Two months later, he scored the goal that won the European Super Cup Real Madrid against Sevilla – heading in on 92.35. Just as he had scored in the semi-final and the final of the Club World Cup seven months before that. Three years in a row, three finals in a row, three goals in a row.

They called this a “final”, too. They did in Catalonia, anyway. Barcelona knew that they could not afford to lose; this was as close to a title decider as you can get in December. Ultimately, Barcelona did not lose, but nor did they win; by the end, they felt like they had lost. “If we recover our style, which in part we are doing, I am convinced we are unstoppable,” Piqué insisted, “we’ll turn this round; there’s a long way to go.” But even if they do recover fully – and they have now gone three in a row without winning – Madrid may not let them catch up. They didn’t here. Another late, late header. A step closer to another title too?

Zidane too insisted that this was not over – he had said before that it wouldn’t have be, no matter what. And he is right of course, they all are. But while the lead is six points, not the nine plus head-to-head Madrid aspired too, it is still significant. This is their biggest lead over Barcelona since 2012, when they won their only league title in the last eight years, and over this decade every time a team has had a six-point-plus lead this far into the season they have won the title. Madrid have not been in a position this good, this early, since Bernd Schuster. On Saturday night, it seemed that they wouldn’t be, either. But then the time came. 92.48, 92.35, 89.48. Ramos o’clock.

Talking points

Granada won

No, really. They did. And against Sevilla, too. It wasn’t as if they didn’t deserve it either. And so, 14 weeks into the season, they finally got a victory – they are finally off the bottom of the table as well. The first, scored by the Manchester United loanee Andreas Pereira, was brilliantly made by the Chelsea loanee Jeremie Boga; the second came from David Lombán. Although Sevilla made it 2-1, the result was never in doubt: theirs was another late goal, a 95th-minute penalty. “We were confused,” Jorge Sampaoli said. Granada were released, at last. “More than angry, the fans were heartbroken; they needed the team to win,” manager Lucas Alcaraz said.

This week’s wild and wonderful game – and there’s at least one every week, it seems – was down in Seville on Sunday lunchtime and on a pitch as wet as an otter’s pocket. It finished Real Betis 3-3 Celta Vigo. It also finished with Iago Aspas on nine goals, as many as Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez. Only Cristiano Ronaldo has more than him this season.

“I don’t think I should say what I think is going wrong: it’s not good to speak while you’re still overheated,” Jaume Costa said after Villarreal drew 0-0 at Leganés, a third game in a row without a win. “We have to think, analyse, and talk. That’s something we’re finding hard to do in the dressing room.”

A 93rd-minute equaliser cost Valencia against Málaga, but they couldn’t say it wasn’t coming. Not on Sunday, and not all season. It finished 2-2, with two excellent and deserved goals from Pablo Fornals. Málaga had taken twice as many shots, Juande Ramos not entirely unjustly insisting: “our dominance was total”, and conceding late goals is a recurring theme. There’s a fragility about Valencia that is frightening them now. Cesare Prandelli talked about psychological weakness right at the start but so far he has not found the cure. They have gone six games without a win and in seven matches under the Italian they have picked up just five of 21 points. “The situation is messed up,” Rodrigo said. They are only two points off the relegation zone (and if Depor win tonight, it will be only goal difference keeping them out of it). “Valencia is a big club but everyone has to realise that the reality is this,” Prandelli said.

Results

Granada 2-1 Sevilla, Barcelona 1-1 Real Madrid, Leganés 0-0 Villarreal, Atlético Madrid 0-0 Espanyol, Real Betis 3-3 Celta Vigo, Athletic Bilbao 3-1 Eibar, Alavés 1-1 Las Palmas, Sporting Gijón 3-1 Osasuna, Valencia 2-2 Málaga

Monday night: Deportivo La Coruña v Real Sociedad.