The curse of Ramos

For the second consecutive season, Sergio Ramos watched from the stands the elimination of Real Madrid in the Champions League. This time in Manchester, without the cameras of the Amazon production team focusing on his box at the Bernabéu for the documentary about the captain of the white team. Nor was that fateful night at Ajax a new experience for Beds. In two of the other nine European eliminations that he has suffered with Real Madrid, the central defender has not been able to help his teammates in the decisive match due to suspension.

The first time he was absent was the 2008 round of 16 return against Roma. In the 2-1 in the Italian capital (Pizarro and Mancini came from Raúl's initial goal) he saw the third yellow for which he had to serve a sanction at the Bernabéu, where the giallorossi they repeated victory with the same result of the first leg (Taddei and Vucinic sentenced the crossing with another goal from Raúl for the Madrid team).

Three years later, in full ecstasy of the Mourinho-Guardiola conflict, Ramos missed the third of a storm of classics also due to the accumulation of yellows. He saw his third warning in the first leg of the semifinals at the Bernabéu (0-2 with a double from Messi) and eight days later he could not step on the pitch at the Camp Nou (1-1 with goals from Pedro and Marcelo).

In his 15 seasons at Real Madrid, Ramos has only missed another three return matches in the Champions League qualifiers. The 2013 quarterfinal against Galatasaray in Istanbul (3-2 in Turkey after 3-0 at the Bernabéu); the round of 16 of 2015, this one due to injury, against Schalke in a match that ended up complicating Madrid (3-4 at the Bernabéu after 0-2 in the first leg); and in the 2018 quarterfinals against Juventus in another agonizing final in Chamartín (1-3 with a penalty in the last minute as the tie was heading for extra time after 0-3 in the first leg).