With over 80 goals to his name and counting, he is set to break the 100-goal mark before he hangs up his boots, a quite remarkable feat for a member of the back line. The fact that he makes it into the top 15 of Real Madrid’s all-time goalscorers list is already ridiculous, especially considering some of the attacking talent to have passed through this grand club’s doors.
It’s not just that he comes up with the occasional goal towards the end of a big win, but that Ramos is time and time again the man scoring when Los Blancos need it most. He is a goalscorer for the big occasions. Atlético Madrid know this all too well, having seen the centre-back leap through the Lisbon air to head home the equaliser in the 2014 Champions League final, a knockout blow which set Real Madrid up for the victory and for La Décima – their 10th European Cup. Two years later. in Milan. it was Ramos who again grabbed Real’s only goal of normal time – even if he did so from an offside position – and it was Ramos who confidently converted the penalty prior to Juanfran’s decisive miss.
Then, in the 2016/17 season, he took his knack for scoring to a whole new Roy of the Rovers level, bagging 10 goals, three of them in the last minute, two more of them in the final 10 minutes of matches and eight of them to either level the scores or to give Real Madrid the lead. Matches were never over until minute ‘NinetyRamos’.
So where does this habit of finding the back of the net come from? Well, like a lot of professional defenders, Ramos played as a striker during his childhood. The most talented kids are put up front in most environments and it was no expectation when Ramos – or Schuster, as he was nicknamed, after the German who would one day become his coach at the Bernabéu – played in the patch of grass in front of his apartment block in Camas, a suburb of Seville.
“In the square we used to play in back in my hometown, I used to always play as a striker and I scored a lot of goals,” he told Undici. “I would run around like crazy celebrating then, just like Cristiano Ronaldo does now. So when I join the attack nowadays I feel comfortable because of all the experience I’ve accumulated since I was a kid. As much as it is infinitely more difficult now as a professional, my previous experience allows me to act differently to other defenders who go forward.”
Of course, more than half of Ramos’ goals have been scored with his head from set pieces, the way in which most centre-backs manage to find their way onto the scoresheet. However, he has also scored a lot of goals that belie his defensive position, from direct free-kicks to overhead kicks. He possesses true goalscoring talent and he knows it.
Perhaps the most telling example of that was when he finished the 2010 World Cup disappointed not to have etched his name onto a scoresheet. For a defender to win the biggest prize in football and to have conceded just two goals en route should have been as good as it could get, but Ramos knew he was capable of scoring. The fact that he hasn’t done so at a major international tournament is only notable because of the fact that he is more than capable of it.
One of the reasons why Ramos was so sure he would score at the 2010 World Cup was because he was not playing at centre-back, but as a right-back – and an attacking one, digging trenches up touchlines across South Africa with his urgent dribbling. At Euro 2008, the Spanish central defensive pairing was Carles Puyol and Carlos Marchena, while two years later it was Puyol and Gerard Piqué, so Ramos’ flexibility saw him pushed out towards the flank by Luis Aragonés and then by Vicente del Bosque.
It made perfect sense, as he’d played there on plenty of occasions for Sevilla, learning from Dani Alves during his years as the Brazilian’s understudy, before playing on the right for Real Madrid. While he remained in the middle for whatever game time he was given in his first two years in the Spanish capital, Ramos was predominantly played at right-back by coach Bernd Schuster in the 2007/08 season, taking over from the ageing Míchel Salgado. It wasn’t until the 2011/12 season that Ramos played more games at centre-back than at right-back, a positional switch made by José Mourinho following RicardoCarvalho’s lengthy back injury and the return of Álvaro Arbeloa.
While he felt more comfortable in the middle of the back four, Ramos enjoyed a lot of success during those years on the right flank, particularly in the pre-Euro 2008 season, when he scored six goals and provided four assists. Each of those assists from the right flank were worthy of any right-back’s highlights reel, the first being a perfect cross onto the head of Raúl for a Madrid derby equaliser and the second a defence-splitting pass for Ruud van Nistelrooy to slot in against Villarreal.
However, it was the third that was the most special, as Ramos set up Gonzalo Higuaín’s title-clinching goal in the Pamplona rain. With just one minute left on the clock as Los Blancos visited Osasuna in the fourth-from-last week of that 2007/08 season, the boy from Camas pinched back possession in the middle of the field, dribbled forward, played a one-two with Mahamadou Diarra and then chipped the ball through a couple of opposition defenders into the Argentine’s path. Then, in the final week of the campaign, he let loose, nodding into Ruud van Nistelrooy’s path for the opener, before bagging a couple of goals for himself.
Those years conducting the right side of Real Madrid’s attacking and defensive play showed the versatility Ramos has to offer, while’s he’s also played at left-back and in defensive midfield on occasion. During practice he even goes in goal, diving around and parrying free-kicks like a natural. This, to put it simply, is a man who loves to play football in any position.