Sergio Ramos is leaving Real Madrid, the Spanish giants confirming on Wednesday that the 35-year-old defender will hold a farewell event on Thursday.
Ramos joined Madrid from Sevilla in 2005 and went on to cement his name as a legend at Santiago Bernabeu.
During his 16-year stint with Los Blancos, Ramos has won LaLiga five times and helped Madrid to four Champions League titles.
Diminishing returns last season, mainly due to injury, mean he does not quite go out on a high, but he will nevertheless be considered as one of the club greats.
BRILLIANT IN BOTH BOXES
It is not often that a defender is known for his goalscoring exploits, but Ramos certainly bucks the trend.
Indeed, he is the only defender to score 100 goals while playing in one of Europe's top five European leagues since the turn of the century.
His total of 101 goals is split between Sevilla and Madrid, though he only scored three times for the Andalusian club before his move to the Spanish capital.
In fact, his tally of 98 Madrid goals mean that, since the turn of the century, the only players to outscore Ramos – who also takes a mean penalty – for the club in all competitions are Cristiano Ronaldo (450), Karim Benzema (279), Raul (225), Gonzalo Higuain (119) and Gareth Bale (105).
Ramos first hit double figures for goals in the 2016-17 campaign, scoring 10 times. He improved on that in 2018-19, registering 11, before netting 13 times in his penultimate season with Madrid, albeit seven of those came from the penalty spot.
Defending, of course, still comes first. Ramos played in 206 games in which Madrid kept a clean sheet. It is a figure beaten for the club only by Iker Casillas (243) since the 1998-99 campaign.
A FULL-BLOODED WINNER
There are no half-measures when it comes to Ramos, who tallied up 214 yellow cards in 659 Madrid appearances, seeing red on 25 occasions. Remarkably, four of those dismissals came in his first season at Madrid.
Since making his Sevilla debut, Ramos has 452 wins under his belt, with 430 coming during his time with Los Blancos.
His trophy count speaks for itself, and his mastery of the dark arts – as Liverpool fans will cite from the 2018 Champions League final – is second to none.
A consistently reliable figure in Madrid's team, he played over 40 times in all but two of the last 16 seasons. His lowest total of appearances came last term, when he managed just 21 games, all of which were starts.
He leaves Madrid as the player with the fourth-most LaLiga appearances for the club, with 469, while only Paco Gento (23) has won more than Ramos' haul of 22 trophies.
SPAIN SNUB
Luis Enrique explained Ramos "has not been able to compete since January in the right condition, or even train with group", meaning he could not be included in Spain's squad for Euro 2020, despite the former Barcelona boss picking only 24 players, and that was before a coronavirus outbreak affected their preparation.
Knee, calf and hamstring complaints limited the World Cup winner's involvement in 2021, but he had also already missed more matches than Madrid would have liked in the first half of the campaign.
Those 21 games and 1,790 minutes are by far the fewest Ramos has played across a season since joining Madrid in 2005, undercutting the previous low marks of 33 and 2,843 in 2015-16.
Had Ramos been able to get on the pitch more often, his performances would surely have seen him included by Luis Enrique, as he was second behind only Diego Llorente (of defenders called up) in terms of interceptions and recoveries in 2020-21.
However, he could not prove his fitness, and his last appearance in a Madrid shirt will ultimately be the disappointing Champions League semi-final defeat to Chelsea last month.
Now, the onus will be on Carlo Ancelotti to restructure Madrid's defence without the presence of a club stalwart.
Start of a new journey – Ex-Man Utd defender Phil Jones sets sights on coaching
Phil Jones is working towards his coaching badges and has started a sporting director course as the former Manchester United defender begins a “new journey”.
The 31-year-old joined the Red Devils from Blackburn in 2011, making 229 appearances and scoring six goals before leaving at the end of his contract in the summer.
Jones had endured an injury-hit few seasons, with his last competitive United appearance coming in the victory against Brentford in May 2022.
The PA news agency understands the 27-cap England international has not called time on his playing career and will keep that option open as long as possible, but he is looking towards the future.
“Start of a new journey,” Jones posted on social media.
“Great to begin the global football sport directorship course with the PFA business school, learning new things about the game, whilst also continuing to push ahead with my A licence and badges at the club that gave me so much. Excited to get started.”
Jones has been observing the younger age groups at United as part of his coaching development as he weighs up his next steps.
Newcastle to be without injured Harvey Barnes for ‘months rather than weeks’
Newcastle winger Harvey Barnes could be facing months on the sidelines as he awaits a specialist’s verdict on the foot injury he suffered at Sheffield United.
The 25-year-old limped out of Sunday’s 8-0 Premier League demolition job at Bramall Lane after just 12 minutes, and head coach Eddie Howe fears he could miss a significant proportion of the campaign with surgery a possibility.
Asked if Barnes could be out for some time, Howe said: “Yes, we’re fearing it’s going to be. It’s difficult. I don’t want to put a time on it until we get confirmation from the specialist, but I think it will be months rather than weeks.”
The England international, who joined the Magpies in a £38million summer switch from Leicester, suffered his injury as he pushed off to run in South Yorkshire and has since undergone a scan.
Howe said: “It’s an injury to a part of the foot just below the toe. I think it’s quite a substantial injury. We’ve had it scanned, we’re waiting now for a specialist’s opinion on what to do next, whether there’s surgery involved or not.
“I don’t think it was a tackle, I think it was just pushing off to run, a very unusual injury. I won’t go too technical because I’m not medically qualified to do so, but yes, very unusual.”
Any extended absence would come as a blow to both a player who is desperate to establish himself on Tyneside – Sunday’s game was just his second start for his new club – and his employers, who invested heavily in his services during their latest spending spree as they prepared for a season which includes Champions League football for the first time in two decades.
Howe said: “He was down after the game because he knew it wasn’t a normal injury where you feel a muscle and think that might be one or two weeks.
“This was a slightly more complex issue, and I think he probably feared the worst because there was no one around him and it was one of those mechanisms where he knew it wasn’t quite right.
“There’s no doubt he’ll be disappointed because he was very keen to show his value and worth and Sunday was an opportunity to do that. But whatever the injury is, we’ll support him and we know he’s a top quality player and he still has a massive part to play.”
Lasse Sorensen ready to swap studying fairytales for writing own in Carabao Cup
Lasse Sorensen has been studying fairytales after going back to school – now he is ready to write his own against West Ham.
Online lessons, assignments and a six-hour exam has made the Lincoln midfielder an expert.
The works of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, which include the Emperor’s New Clothes, the Ugly Duckling and the Princess and the Pea, have been the focus.
Enrolling in the Voksenuddannelsescentre, adult education courses, Sorensen completed his Danish literature class in the summer, all part of the 23-year-old’s plan to earn the qualifications he missed growing up.
It is apt, playing for a club known for its recent romantic cup stories, as Lincoln target another against the Hammers in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.
“The school takes it right back to analyse fairytales, novels and old scripts from 300 years ago,” Sorensen tells the PA news agency, ahead of the third-round tie at Sincil Bank.
“So all the very boring stuff that I don’t think anybody really finds interesting, I certainly didn’t! I’ve done every fairytale Hans Christian Andersen has written.
“In Denmark you need subjects like Danish, maths, history and physics before you can do anything in later life. So I took Danish, the equivalent to A-Levels in England, so if I want to go to Uni one day, I can.
“When you play senior football a lot of it is games, games, games. There’s so much football.
“So, sometimes the best thing to do is leave and get your head off it. I was thinking ‘what can I do which can be beneficial?’ I’m a thinker so if something happens I’ll sit and think about it a lot, good or bad.
“I’ll sit and think if I don’t have anything else do to, so why not go back to education?
https://x.com/itvfootball/status/1649865138101420032?s=20
“It can never be bad and the main thing was just to get my brain off football sometimes. Otherwise, on your CV, you’ve got a little bit to say you’ve played football for a few years and done nothing else.”
Leaving his home town, Vejen, and first team Esbjerg to join Stoke in 2016 Sorensen’s education took a back seat.
At just 15 he moved to England without any qualifications and, while there were English lessons at the Potters, football was the focus.
“Because I was Danish, I was just studying the language. I came to the club and then had to quickly learn as much as I could,” says the midfielder, who made eight appearances for Stoke before joining Lincoln in 2021.
“So on the Wednesday, which was normally when the English lads used to do the education, I spent my time learning English.
“The hardest bit of going back to school was just starting and getting your head around it.
“As much as I’ve enjoyed getting my mind off other things, it’s never the most exciting thing to sit down and do.
“But that was the good thing as well because you’ll say to yourself ‘you need to get it done otherwise you won’t get it.’
“It was disciplined, the hardest and the best thing was I had to be disciplined about it.”
His online studies culminated in the exam back in Vejen this summer with Sorensen’s graft paying off as he scored 10 – the equivalent to an A.
“I had to sit with 100 people in a big school hall with my laptop for six hours, you couldn’t speak either of course. It was a bit different to what I’ve done for the last eight years,” says the Denmark Under-20 international, who is also planning to start a financial advisor course.
He is now in a break from his studies as he prepares to start a maths course in a few months. Football remains the priority and the immediate one is another Premier League scalp.
Last season Lincoln reached the Carabao Cup last 16, where they lost to Southampton, as they added to the club’s cup pedigree after their impressive run to the FA Cup quarter-finals in 2017 while still in the National League.
A shoot-out win at Sheffield United last month earned the Imps a crack at the Europa Conference League holders and Sorensen knows Mark Kennedy’s side can write another chapter.
He said: “It’s always 11 v 11. Some might be the favourites and some the underdogs but if you want it more than the others, you are the ones who win it.
“They’re a really, really good team, they are quality players, but it’s not actually won yet.
“It’s been shown before, we beat Sheffield United in the last round so we’ve got a growing belief we could do it again.
“You’ve always got to believe in yourself to do the thing most people think you can’t.”
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