MADRID, 23 (EUROPA PRESS)
The Paris Saint-Germain defender Sergio Ramos announced his “goodbye” to the Spanish team because the coach, Luis de la Fuente, told him this same day that “he does not count and will not count” on him “regardless of the level he may show”.
“I will continue to cheer on my country from home with the emotion of the privileged person who has been able to proudly represent it 180 times. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who always believed in me!” the Spanish international wrote this Thursday on his Twitter account, accompanying a letter in which he recounts this surprising “end of journey” after speaking with De la Fuente.
The Sevillian footballer, who spent 16 seasons at Real Madrid, missed his first major tournament with the national team in the last Euro 2020 Cup, which was played a year later due to the pandemic, and he was not at the recent World Cup in Qatar either. However, Ramos has always been optimistic and eager to play for Spain again and extend his all-time record of games.
The player who has worn the shirt of the Spanish team the most times unexpectedly explained the “end of a journey that I expected to be longer”. “The time has come to say goodbye to the national team. This morning I received a call from the current coach, who told me that it doesn’t count and that he won’t count on me, regardless of the level I can show or how I continue my sports career”, begins his letter.
“With great regret, it is the end of a journey that I hoped would be longer and that it would end with a better taste in the mouth, on a par with all the successes we have achieved with our Red”, points out Ramos who seemed to recover his best version, after many problems with injuries, which also made him lose prominence in Madrid and in Luis Enrique’s team.
Farewell to a history of the national team, 180 games as a full international in which he scored 23 goals and won a World Cup and two Euro Cups, thus comes with a good dose of controversy, claiming that he deserved another ending. “Humbly, I believe that this career deserved to end due to a personal decision or because my performance was not up to what our team deserves, but not due to age or other reasons that, without having heard them, I have felt”, he points out. .
“Being young or less young is not a virtue or a defect, it is just a temporary characteristic that is not necessarily related to performance or ability. I look with admiration and envy at Modric, Messi, Pepe… the essence, tradition, values, meritocracy and justice in football. Unfortunately it will not be like that for me, because football is not always fair and football is never just football”, he ends with “sadness” but with his “head held high “.