Sergio Ramos Proves There Is No God
Sergio Ramos. Fucking Sergio Ramos. At what point do you say: enough is enough, Sergio Ramos, you are banned from football forever.
Once again, the world was witness to a clash of actual good vs evil this weekend. The key event from which was not Gareth Bale’s wonder goal or Karius’s Blunderhole but watching Mo Salah: kind, generous Mo Salah, having his arm judo-thrown out of its socket by football’s worst bastard, who watches him get stretchered off with a broad grin on his face, like a psychopath-in-waiting who’s just gutted his first sparrow. Sergio Ramos doing a job on Liverpool’s best player and undoubtedly changing the game. And, once again, it’s painful to see the forces of evil winning over the forces of good. It’s painful to be reassured, once again, that there is nothing out there. No one in the endless void to hear you scream. No benevolent force in the universe to watch out for you and protect goodness, and good people. No. Just endless, stupefying, cosmic indifference to innumerable moral transgressions, all with no consequences or meaning. Being good, and doing the right thing, and playing the right way won’t get you anywhere. Evil always wins. We may as well just shut down all our charities, stop taxing the rich, stop trying to fight the global polluters or halt climate change. They’ve won. Let’s face it. They’ve all fucking won.
Watching Sergio Ramos play is like watching a caricature villain in a Marvel movie, except in this movie, the bad guy wins. He has all the talents in the world — superpowers, you might say — but he is also willing to use every other card in his deck to win. He looks like the guy who, when America and the two Koreas start nuking each other and we enter a post-nuclear dystopia, comes to your house and takes your stuff, including all the framed pictures of your nan that have loads of sentimental value, and then just puts them in the bin and laughs. As one Twitter user put it this weekend, he would unplug your life support to charge his phone.
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The sad thing about Ramos is that it’s so needless. He’d still have so many trophies because he is one of, if not the, best defenders in the world. This man, who is very good at football, who scores more goals than most strikers, who gets more tackles in than Ron Jeremy, who gets more blocks in than Donald Trump on Twitter, also and for absolutely no reason has the moral compass of the bastard child of Floyd Mayweather and a starving raccoon. Because of course, not only did he heave on Salah’s arm like the Volga Boatmen, but he did the dirty on Loris Karius a few minutes later. As if poor lube-for-gloves Loris’s night wasn’t going badly enough, Ramos clearly elbowed him in the face with his thick, cheating arm during a corner. Then he dived to try and get Mané sent off. Just like last year when he did it to Cuadrado, and it worked. And to anyone watching, surely you are thinking: this is enough.
But you would be wrong. Where is the condemnation? Apart from Egyptian Twitter, the football world has collectively shrugged about an actual act of physical harm, which would be illegal if you did it on the street to some drunk lad in a bar. Never mind that this is a potentially World-Cup ending injury, done to one of football’s nicest ever chaps, to a man who has done more good for the reputation of Egypt and for engagement with Liverpool’s Muslim community than perhaps anyone in recent memory just by being a really good guy. Where is the retroactive ban? Ronaldo got a five game ban for shoving a ref — annoying but not harmful or dangerous. The media and pundits need to get off the fence about this one. There is no fence. No wall. No room for error. No grey area. Nothing. This is one of the top three terrible things I have ever seen done on a top-tier football pitch. Cantona drop-kicking a fan. Roy Keane on Alf-Inge Håland. And Sergio Ramos UFCing Salah’s arm out of its joint.
All the worse, there is this strange argument, this strange praise flying around from pundits that all this is somehow fine and ok because he’s a “winner” — because he just “wants to win”, because he has “desire”. I’m still in the dark about how this is not just obviously bollocks. This is not, like, a war. It’s not the siege of Stalingrad where you have to eat your pet cat to survive. It’s a game, with a set code of rules, and if you can’t win on the terms of those rules then it doesn’t or shouldn’t count. You should go home with a hollow feeling in your chest and question whether you’d actually won properly; definitely not smile and tweet about how good it feels, and not even apologise. And under no circumstances, on any planet, should you take a selfie stick onto the stage with you as if you’re on a lads’ weekend in Prague.
Because, Sergio Ramos, you know what you did. We all know what you did. And if only you hadn’t proved He didn’t exist with your relentless evil, God would judge you for your sins.
But He won’t. So if you need me, I’ll be burning fossil fuels in my back yard and stealing from the poor because nothing fucking matters now. Nothing at all.
