Sergio Ramos sees red again as frustrating start to Paris Saint-Germain career continues

Veteran defender has started only one league game for French club since joining in summer

Sergio Ramos in action for PSG before his sending off against Lorient. Reuters

“It could have happened to any player,” insisted Paris Saint-Germain manager Mauricio Pochettino, of the red card that left his team reduced to 10 on the last match day of a tumultuous year at the big-spending French club. They were a goal down at that moment, to small-spending Lorient.

Pochettino was analysing the two fouls that led to two yellow cards within four minutes for the PSG star obliged to watch from the dressing-room his team’s late comeback to claim a point on Wednesday. The first was for a challenge in the Lorient penalty area during some jostling around a PSG corner. The second was a crude obstruction. There were four minutes between the two offences, the second of them in the 86th minute.

The offender? Sergio Ramos, who, at 35 years old, is no naif when it comes to guessing how far a referee might be convinced of a defender’s innocence when he plants his body in front of a counter-attacking forward and then presents himself as the injured party. Doing just that brought Ramos his second yellow card, and his first sending-off since he signed for PSG in the summer.

It was the 27th red card of a career with some very impressive other numbers — four Champions League titles with Real Madrid; a World Cup and two European championships with Spain; an astonishing 127 senior goals by a defender — but a breathtaking record of dismissals.

What’s more, Ramos had only come on at half-time against Lorient. He has only started once in the league for PSG all season. That meant had played a mere 130 minutes of Ligue 1 football before he was sent-off by Jeremie Pignard, a match official a year Ramos’s junior.

He will be suspended for the French Cup tie against lower-league Vannes on January 3 and will not appreciate being out of action. Ramos has spent too much of this calendar year waiting for chances to play.

In the period before a series of muscle injuries limited him to barely 300 minutes on the pitch for Real Madrid in Liga or Champions League football in the first six months of 2021, this was to have been a crowning year for one of modern football’s most decorated individuals.

Ramos had expected to captain Spain to the Euros; there had even been some lobbying for him to be his country’s senior over-age player at the Tokyo Olympics. In the end he watched the country for whom he has won 180 caps lose a Euros semi-final on penalties without him in the squad, and Spain finish with a silver medal in the Olympics.

He had hoped to be offered a two-year contract extension with Madrid, to take his record-setting epoch at the club into an 18th year. When Madrid only suggested a one-year renewal, he expressed his genuine regrets about leaving, but knew, on a free transfer, he would have a queue of suitors.

PSG pounced. Ramos, though still struggling with a calf injury that affected him for the next four months, was unveiled as the second brightest star in the galaxy of recruits in the close-season: Lionel Messi to dazzle up front; Ramos to lead the back line; Georginio Wijnaldum to add dynamism to midfield; Achraf Hakimi to dominate the right flank; Nuno Mendes, the young Portugal full-back, to do the same on the left, plus Gigi Donnarumma, Italy’s hero of the Euros, in as a new goalkeeper.

All the outfielders in that list played at Lorient on Wednesday, a significant first in that it coincided with the absence of three established PSG totems. Kylian Mbappe and Marco Verratti were suspended, and Neymar is recovering from injury.

Without them, PSG went 1-0 down for the first time in a league game this season. Messi, who has scored just one Ligue 1 goal so far, had an effort ping back off the frame of the goal, as he has several times as a PSG player. Wijnaldum, who has been criticised for falling short of the standards he set at Liverpool, fluffed a goalscoring chance. Mendes was replaced at half-time by Ramos. Hakimi, not for the first time, outshone the rest by setting up the stoppage-time equaliser for Mauro Icardi.

“We have things to improve,” acknowledged Pochettino after watching his team drop points for the third time in four matches. But he is comforted by how the Ligue 1 table looks at the midway stage of the season. PSG are a vast 13 points clear of second place.