Science says that nature abhors a vacuum and will always try to fill it. Maybe that’s why as soon as the eternal rivalry Cristiano Ronaldo – Lionel messi began to decline when CR7 left Spain, Sergio Ramos entered to take his place.
Right now we are witnessing a stopped ball duel between someone who is becoming one of the best free-throw kickers in history, and Ramos, who has suddenly become a killer from the penalty spot.
Messi is a metronome. The phrase in vogue today is that a free kick less than 30 meters from the goal is “like a penalty for him”. And it’s not bad. Ramos, for his part, has developed an eccentric but specialized technique from the penalty spot, and converted the last 18 penalties he kicked for his club and his country, nine of them during the 2019/20 season despite giving Karim Benzema two chances, and two more last year.
It is a daunting set-ball exhibition contest. The Argentine makes a couple of free throws in two or three games and the Andalusian defender responds with a stung penalty after another, kicked arrogantly and coldly over desolate goalkeepers to the beat of, “Anything you do, I can do better. .. “(It’s like his registered step).
None of them is a historical reference in their art. Not yet. Messi, for example, has not yet overtaken Cristiano Ronaldo (although it is imminent) and can only dream of the totals of Juninho Pernambucano, Zico, Pelé, David Beckham and Ronaldinho. At least for the moment. But he and Ramos have found extraordinarily rich streaks of category in full balance. In these occasions, moments that can make other players tremble and that can leave them in full evidence if ambition far exceeds skill, they have turned their cold conversions into tools to win games.
For Ramos and Messi, their current excellence can be considered something like a “second summer”. For example, it was not until exactly four years after his competitive debut in Barcelona that Messi scored for the first time from a free kick, against Atleti in a 6-1 win during the campaign in which Pep Guardiola won the treble.
You remember? It was an extraordinary way to open his free throw count, and it bears the typical Messi stamp. October 2008 runs, Atleti is already 2-0 down after eight minutes, and Messi is fouled outside the area. The rojiblancos not only discuss the shot with referee Iturralde González, but Raúl García stands a meter from the ball so that they cannot kick quickly. At least that’s what he believed.
On the ball are Xavi, the referee and Messi. Messi gives Iturralde a little push to get him out of the way, asks him, “Can I kick?”, And the referee says yes. Realizing what the little rogue was about to do, Xavi barely ran out of Messi, and Atleti goalkeeper Gregory Coupet was misled by the fact that Raúl García seems to be too close to the ball to for the game to start or for Barça to get the idea of scoring, he is standing on the left stick trying to organize the barrier.
Messi kicks in front of a 99 percent open goal. It’s the same kind of opportunism Messi and Barcelona will suffer years later, at Anfield last season, when Trent-Alexander Arnold surprised them as they caught their breath in the corner from where Divock Origi scored the winning goal in the Champions League semi-final. League. But let’s go back to 2008: Atleti was outraged. The referee told them it was their own fault for protesting and staying too close to the ball. He assured that he had whistled and the goal was not disallowed.
In February 2012, again against Atleti and almost eight years after his debut, Messi reached the insubstantial sum of five goals from a free kick.. In other words, he is 24 years old, has three Champions League titles, has been awarded the Ballon d’Or and considered a truly exceptional player, but not a great free-throw kicker. Let’s jump to Saturday and the impressive goals he scored with carefree ease from far away on a night when he wasn’t playing particularly well against Celta de Vigo. With them, Messi has scored 52 free-kick goals for his club and his team, a remarkable acceleration to something that is more than admirable and is already extraordinary.
And what about “Planet Ramos”? Given his unerring and unrelenting skill from the penalty spot, the fact that he has scored 126 goals for his club and his country, as he has scored a grand total of nine free kick goals during the 2019-20 season, you may be It is surprising to learn that just two years ago, in February 2018, this confident and audacious Madrid player converted just his second penalty in the Iberian league.
Crazy, right? Today, he would hit the kidneys who dared to take the ball away from him once the referee had aimed at the penalty spot. And then, without exception, he takes five or six steps back, a couple of long strides toward the ball, drags the tip of his left boot across the grass, and most likely hits the ball over a desperate almost 1.90 goalkeeper already on the run. threw.
Like Messi, Ramos made his senior debut in 2004 with Sevilla, but failed to get his first competitive penalty in around seven years.. The reason for this was not the horrible mistake in the 2013 Confederations Cup final, when Brazil was beating Spain in Rio, leaving the ball out of Julio Cesar’s (et you, Sergio!) Goal. It also had nothing to do with the horror of the semi-final of the 2012 Champions League campaign when, trailing 2-1 on penalties against Bayern Munich, he missed and the next conversion, by Bastian Schweinsteiger, defined the match.
No. Part of Ramos’ fierce need to kick and score penalties right now has to do with the impatient wait he has had to endure to rid himself of his competitors to make these kinds of shots. Since Ramos joined Madrid in 2005, his coaches have preferred Roberto Carlos, Zinedine Zidane, Robinho, Raúl, Gonzalo Higuaín, Kaka, Xabi Alonso, Emmanuel Adebayor, Karim Benzema, Ángel Di María, Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo over to the. When he converted only his second penalty with Madrid in 2018 it was because Cristiano was resting against Leganés; It wasn’t until the Portuguese left the club and Ramos, as captain, took permanent charge of penalties that his extraordinary form became a weapon for Los Blancos.
And yes they had been missing it!
Occasionally, if Madrid have a second penalty shortly after Ramos has scored, they hand it over to Benzema. -not necessarily for having a friendly gesture, but with the aim of making the goalkeeper doubt and to try to get the victory and the three points. But in the 2019 Champions League, when Rodrygo broke out with two goals in seven minutes against Galatasaray and a penalty was awarded, we saw the immovable stance of the Madrid captain suggesting “it’s my turn and no one will take it away from me.”
Parts of the audience sang cheering for Rodrygo as they wanted to see the 18-year-old scoring a hat trick in record time making his Champions League home debut.. As Ramos was setting up the ball, Marcelo trotted over and, I bet he suggested that his young compatriot get a chance. Ramos ran him out of the area. Then when Ramos scored the goal, he pointed to his back in the best Christian style, saying, “I’m just as good at this as he is.” The Madrid captain’s face showed no emotion, there was no sign of joy.
My interpretation is that Ramos did not like the chants of the Bernabéu for a rising young man who has been at the club for a very short time, forgetting that he, “Don Sergio,” has had to wait patiently for a long time until his arrival arrived. turn. Now, he is center stage and has no intention of giving up his place.
The case of Messi is similar. During his reign as the greatest player of all time in Barcelona, he also had to wait his turn.. At the beginning, it was Xavi and Rafa Márquez who were in charge of these shots: free kicks were their territory. Then Andrés Iniesta and Thiery Henry appeared occasionally. Anyway, like Ramos, Messi knew that he was not a natural killer in those situations. Like Ramos with his penalties, he thought long and hard about how to go about scoring goals ruthlessly. Leaving aside how good the No. 10 from Barcelona, he needed to perfect his technique.
The key is practice, Messi recognizes that at the beginning he did not kick with enough force. His coach with Argentina from 2006 to ’08, Alfio Basile, used to tell him that he “crossed the ball straight into the goalkeeper’s hand.” Diego Maradona, who was also Argentina’s coach, advised him on the precise place in which to make contact with the ball, Messi studied Juan Román Riquelme’s technique and also worked hard in training. Now, it is as natural for him as breathing. He is amazing.
Of course, both Ramos and Messi have dabbled in the art of the other. Messi has kicked 112 penalties in professional football, scoring 87. Sometimes his technique seems as natural as Ramos’s and we all expect a guaranteed goal. Sometimes he looks insecure, nervous. He once told me, after scoring a penalty against Milan in the Champions League in 2012, that when he was about to kick, he got to thinking about how big, agile and athletic Christian Abbiati looked and how he seemed to take up the entire goal. The power of the mind, whether he’s in a good mood or playing tricks on you, is everything in that situation.
A statistic related to penalties that caught my attention about Messi is that he never lost a League or Champions League game in which he missed a penalty., usually adding one or more goals or assists. Having said that, we could say that hitting the crossbar from a distance of 11 meters against Chelsea in 2012 cost Barcelona a place in the final for the second year in a row.