La Liga Hangover: Ramos Will Be Ramos, and There's Nothing You Can Do About It

It was George Packer at the The New Yorker who once wrote that we should "pay attention to other people's nightmares, because they might be contagious." Packer wasn't referring to anything as trivial as football with such a line, but on Saturday night, you felt he may as well have been.

When the ball struck the back of the net at the Santiago Bernabeu, when it was him again, when the only man whom it could ever possibly be raced and then slid his way toward the sideline with his arms out and his team-mates piling on top of him, Deportivo La Coruna will have felt like they were living out someone else's nightmare. 

This time the clock read 91:53. Only seven days earlier it had read 89:48. The time before that it was 92:35, and before that it was 92:48. It's remarkable that we can say "before that" so many times. Atletico Madrid got it first and then Sevilla, and Barcelona got it after them. Now Depor have had it, too: It's contagious all right. 

Gary Lineker once famously said that "football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." But if the last two weekends have taught us anything, it's that—as the BBC's Andy West nodded to—Lineker's line could be revised a little: "Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, Sergio Ramos heads it in."

Watching Ramos pull off his signature move again on Saturday to propel Real Madrid to a 3-2 victory had you questioning whether the last seven days had actually happened or whether time might not be so much curved as it is shaped like a doughnut. If this was The Matrix, Morpheus would be telling us to locate the structural flaws of the building in search of the nearest exit, and the Oracle would have declared Ramos to be "The One." She'd be right, too.  

In these situations, there's no one like him. Saturday night at the Bernabeu was astonishing not just for the timing of the drama, but for the way the Real Madrid captain seems as though he has a hold over such moments. Lisbon and Trondheim belong to him. Last week the Camp Nou did. On Saturday it was his own backyard that did so.

As Toni Kroos stood over the corner at the southern end with the clock ticking through the 92nd minute thanks to Przemyslaw Tyton's imitation of a starfish that was good enough to belong in a David Attenborough documentary, the television camera zoomed in on Ramos, not once, but twice. Those at the controls knew who to look out for. So did Kroos, and so did the Bernabeu. But so did Depor. It didn't matter. 

It's as if there's nothing you can do to stop it or that the knowledge of what's coming isn't helpful but instead a hindrance, a paralysis setting in.

Ramos started near the edge of the penalty area and bent his run around the congestion toward the near post. Where was the marking? Where was the body check? The threat of the obvious had frozen Depor. No one had enjoyed a run at a target that free since Cameron at the end of 10 Things I Hate About You. 

But there's something about Ramos you can't ignore. There's a force of will or a pull to him in these sorts of moments. Manager Zinedine Zidane touched on it afterwards, falling short of delving into the mystical but still attempting to express something that's difficult to explain. 

"You can mark him," said Zidane, "but he's smart, he moves very well and the ball is like a magnet to his head. He's there where the ball falls. You can work on your marking but it's difficult to mark him well. Deportivo defend set pieces very well but...a ball to the front post and goal."

Zidane recognises that Ramos is unique—"special," the Frenchman called him—and so do his team-mates. Marco Asensio said "Ramos always steps up in the final minutes," adding that the captain's goal whipped the Bernabeu into a delirium he'd never seen before, per the club's official website. Alvaro Morata said: "Let's hope he continues to do it forever, it's like something out of a fairytale."

Ramos, though, belongs in no fairytale. He's instead the ultimate cartoon hero. Flawed but decisive, rash but big time, an OTT picture of wild emotion covered in daft tattoos, he's always treaded the line between footballer and caricature.

Watching him defend is often one of football's delights for a neutral. No one in the game oscillates between the commanding and the comical quite like Madrid's captain. In the last two years in particular, he's been an erratic liability at the back; by October this season, he'd already given away four penalties—one of which was a handball against Villarreal that wouldn't have looked out of place on a beach volleyball court. 

This is the Ramos way, though. Being caught out of position and hacking down forwards with dreadful tackles before then seizing the biggest moments is the definition of Ramosing. You're a special footballer when you have your own verb, and Madrid wouldn't have him any other way. 

Look what he's given them in the last few seasons alone. He's the man responsible for one of the biggest moments in his club's colossal history in Lisbon; the man who got them there with his goals in Munich; the man who scored the pivotal opener in Milan; the man who pulled his trick against Sevilla to hurl his club toward another title; the man who sunk Barcelona hearts in the Clasico; the man who did it again against Depor. 

It might be luck if it had happened only once or twice, but it keeps happening over and over. As the famous American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it: "Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." 

Ramos would agree, and so would Zidane. "He's the heart and soul of this team," the Frenchman said on Saturday, and few would dispute that.

Madrid's emotional leader has something that others don't. The term Madridismo is difficult to define, but Ramos has been representative of it more than anyone since Raul. It doesn't relate to ability or style but to substance.

Madrid's idea of themselves as a club is that they're never beaten, that no one possesses a greater will to win and that achieving the remarkable is who they are. Ramos couldn't fit that any better, and one senses the team around him is beginning to align with that, too. 

This Madrid outfit is an imperfect one but one that just won't be beaten. They've now gone 35 games without defeat and continue to rumble along, riding the bumps they give themselves but consistently conjuring responses to them as well. 

Saturday's win over Depor was perhaps the perfect illustration of who they are. They went ahead through talent, behind through calamity and then off to victory through simple will and force of character. It wasn't pretty, and the truth is that Zidane's team rarely have been, but that won't matter one bit to them. 

Madrid keep doing this, again and again. Ramos keeps doing this, again and again. For them and him it's a dream. For their opponents it's a nightmare. Atletico got it first and then Sevilla and Barcelona got it after them. Depor got it on Saturday. It's contagious all right.  

'We Need Balls'

"Out, out, out," cried Superdeporte, but not in Spanish; in Italian. Valencia'a 3-2 loss to Real Sociedad at Anoeta on Saturday saw things get ugly for manager Cesare Prandelli, but at what point does this stop being about managers? The Italian, remember, is the club's fifth manager in a year. Every week the club's spiral descends further, and the scary bit is that there might be still further to fall yet. 

Late on Saturday night, fans waited for Valencia's players outside Paterna. Some attempted to shake the team bus. Others shouted "mercenaries." The environment is toxic, and that doesn't help, but this is a club that have created this for themselves. 

"We don't deserve this—well, we do—but the fans don't," Santi Mina told beIN Sports, his correcting of himself significant. 

For the way the club have conducted themselves over the last 18 months, they probably do deserve this. This is a club with no model and no direction; a club gripped by their own ineptitude starting at the top with owner Peter Lim, whom Prandelli, sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch and chairwoman Layhoon Chan flew to meet in Singapore on Sunday.

The point of discussion will be the January transfer window, but even though they need one, you can't buy a completely new club in a month. 

"We need pride and we need balls, or we're going to s--t," Mina added. 

Not Forgotten Amid the Hangover 

• If Ramos will be Ramos, then Messi will be Messi. On Saturday, the Argentinian's effort to evade five Osasuna players and sit two of them on their backsides to score his second goal contained so much filth that it should have been put behind parental search filters. 

• It's not often you say this: Barcelona's win at El Sadar Stadium was their first in the league in more than a month. And though it was 3-0, it could easily have been eight or nine. Messi and Luis Suarez missed four chances between them before the Uruguayan opened the scoring. 

• There are substitutions and then there are masterstrokes. Jorge Sampaoli bringing on Vicente Iborra and then watching him score a hat-trick to propel Sevilla to a 3-0 win over Celta Vigo probably falls into the latter category. 

• Sevilla are just one point behind Barcelona, you know. 

• Speaking again of Barcelona, they've got Espanyol next up in the Catalan derby, and Quique Sanchez Flores' men are quietly flying. A 2-1 win over Sporting Gijon on Sunday was their fourth in six league games and extended their unbeaten run in all competitions to 10. "[Our] fans have the right to dream," said Flores, per Sport. 

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