Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has been a great leader for the club, especially in his second stint as president after he learned from his previous mistakes during the Galacticos era.
Unfortunately, despite all the Champions League titles and records broken by the president at Real Madrid, he has remained a creature of habit in a couple of annoying ways.
Firstly, he doesn’t like to listen to his managers when they offer signings. Secondly, he prefers to go after attacking players rather than defensive players, which very much hurt Real Madrid in the 2024/25 season. And finally, he doesn’t like sequels.
All these three things conspired against Real Madrid legend Sergio Ramos, who left the club after the 2020/21 season because Los Blancos weren’t going to offer him a two-year contract. Perez has another stubborn policy where he won’t give players who are 35 years old more than a one-year extension.
David Alaba is an albatross now
Ramos didn’t like the money that he was offered or the fact that he couldn’t stay longer than a year, and he and his agent – his brother – decided to walk way, even though Ramos, by his own admission, didn’t want to leave the club he loved.
Real Madrid would go on to win the Champions League the next season with the iconic David Alaba becoming a key figure at the club as the No. 4, hoisting a chair as a key player during the miracle title run.
Although Alaba has declined sharply since a torn ACL during the 2023/24 season, the two Champions League titles to his name show that he’s been a success overall for the club, even if he is currently an overpaid albatross.
Ramos never won Champions League gold at his next club, PSG, and Real actually completed a miracle Remontada against PSG – Ramos was out injured – in the 2021/22 season.
Still at the top of his game
When healthy, Ramos was a monster for PSG, and he ended up going back to Sevilla and winning Europa League goal, helping the historic LaLiga side turn around potential relegation to win a major trophy over one of Ramos’s former Real Madrid managers, the legendary Jose Mourinho (at Roma).
All of this is a roundabout way to say that no matter how old he is or where he’s been, Ramos has remained quality. And even though Alaba has quickly fizzled out after a major injury, Ramos has remained in tip-top shape despite his own injury woes a couple of years ago.
Now 39, Ramos is still at the top of his game for Liga MX side Monterrey, and while Mexican sides aren’t often in the mainstream spotlight with the focus on European football, Ramos got a chance to show what he can do to an international audience at the Club World Cup against Champions League Finalists Inter Milan.
Not only did Ramos score Monterrey’s lone goal in an upset 1-1 draw against the Italian giants, but he was easily the best player on the pitch, producing a defensive monsterclass that was even more impressive than his goal.
Real Madrid didn’t have a single great defender last season
The former Real Madrid No. 4 didn’t need to make a single tackle, as he recorded four interceptions, 11 clearances, and two blocked shots in an elite defensive display against Inter Milan that would make the likes of Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini proud.
An all-time great in his own right, Ramos completed over 91 percent of his passes in the kind of all-around performance that has been customary of Ramos over the past decade at the highest level of the Champions League.
Real Madrid were offered the chance to sign Ramos during the 2024/25 season but declined, and, instead, they struggled horribly defensively with no real leadership and Antonio Rudiger as the only healthy senior center back for much of the campaign.
Not a single Real Madrid central defender was great, and Ramos showed against Inter Milan that he is better than any central defender currently on the Madrid roster.
Alaba is finished, Raul Asencio is too ill-disciplined to trust, and Rudiger is both ill-disciplined and declining as an overrated player. Ramos, meanwhile, is underrated, and Perez’s ego prevented Carlo Ancelotti from getting the defensive and ball-playing leader he desperately needed at the back.
With Ramos displaying this kind of ability in big games, Real Madrid could have won the Supercup, Copa del Rey, or even LaLiga with the upgrade and leadership he provides. Count this as another screw-up by the Madrid board.
The editor of A Trip to Cibeles for Real Madrid, Joe Soriano helped manage The Real Champs covering Real Madrid as a dedicated writer from 2019 to 2022, making it one of the biggest team soccer sites on the web. He currently also runs the world soccer site The Trivela Effect, the Tottenham site Hotspur HQ, and a pro wrestling site called Let Them Wrestle.