Sevilla v Real Madrid: Sergio Ramos continues to divide opinions before meeting former club
- Published
Sergio Ramos signed for boyhood club Sevilla from Paris St-Germain in the summer
He is one of the most emblematic players in Real Madrid history, but this weekend Sergio Ramos will be playing against them.
Over the course of 16 seasons and 671 appearances - the fourth-most in the club's history - the charismatic centre-back defended Real's famous white shirt with unmatched levels of pride and ferocity.
Ramos won 22 major honours during his time at the Bernabeu and was responsible for one of the most iconic moments in club history - a towering header to equalise in stoppage time of the 2014 Champions League final against city rivals Atletico, spectacularly salvaging Real's long-coveted quest for a 10th European crown.
But his story did not start in Madrid, and neither will it end there.
Ramos was born and raised in Camas, on the outskirts of Seville, and joined his local team at the age of 10 before advancing through the ranks to make his first-team debut in 2004, aged just 17.
His talent was plain to see and the following year he was snapped up by Real for €27m, then a Spanish record for a defender.
The rest is history, but the final chapter is still being written because now, after two mixed years with Paris St-Germain, Ramos has made an emotional return to his boyhood club, signing a contract until the end of this season - quite possibly his last - on a free transfer.
But his supposed dream homecoming has been far from plain sailing. For starters, many fans were bitterly opposed to his signing, having long ago crossed the emotional line from love to hate during Ramos' time with Real.
In particular, Ramos' provocative celebration of his Panenka penalty for Real at Sevilla in 2017 was regarded by many supporters of his former club as a betrayal.
So it was unsurprising when ultras group Biris Norte reacted to his arrival this summer by issuing a public statement, declaring the signing as "a lack of respect to the values that have made us great, to the symbols and legends who have defended our badge, and to the thousands of Sevilla fans who have suffered the insults of this player in the past".
Those radical condemnations are by no means shared by all Sevilla fans, many of whom never stopped idolising Ramos as a local boy made good, especially considering his achievements with the Spanish national team - winning the 2010 World Cup and the two European Championships either side of it. But the extreme divergence of views about his arrival shows that Ramos's long-established ability to drastically divide opinion remains intact, even at the age of 37.
On the pitch, things have been equally challenging, with Sevilla only winning two of this season's 11 competitive games to result in the sacking of manager Jose Luis Mendilibar during the international break, less than five months after he led the team to victory in the Europa League.
His surprising and risky replacement is Diego Alonso, who has never previously coached outside South America and whose last job, managing his native Uruguayan national team, ended in failure with a group stage elimination from last year's World Cup finals.
Before his first game in charge, at home to league-leading Real on Saturday, one of the main questions facing Alonso is whether Ramos should be named in the starting line-up.
The defender was in and out of the team under axed boss Mendilibar and delivered mixed performances when he did play, with the main 'highlight' coming last month against Barcelona when he scored an unfortunate own goal to give the reigning champions a 1-0 victory.
A reflection of the mood of Sevilla supporters came during the international break when local sports newspaper Estadio Deportivo ran a poll asking fans to select their favoured centre-back pairing. The options involving Ramos received only 29% of the votes, with the overwhelming majority (71%) choosing versatile Serb Nemanja Gudelj alongside former Nottingham Forest loanee Loic Bade.
Making that decision and leaving Ramos on the bench would, however, be a massive gamble for Alonso as he looks to make a positive early impression.
Ramos' magnetic personality and unshakeable self-belief make him a natural leader and a very forceful character inside any dressing room - best demonstrated when he used a few well-chosen words to the media to effectively forbid Real president Florentino Perez from appointing Antonio Conte as boss in 2018.
And dressing room footage of Ramos volubly rallying his new Sevilla team-mates immediately after his debut against Las Palmas last month shows, as you would expect, that he has every intention of retaining his alpha male status. For Alonso, the warning is clear - go against him at your peril.
So it is very likely that Alonso will lean on the veteran's presence and experience, and that Ramos will take the field from the start on Saturday evening.
And, considering his peerless ability to attract incident and controversy wherever he goes, we can also expect him to be at the thick of the action.
A dramatic late winner followed by an even later red card after instigating a brawl with new Real leader Jude Bellingham? Don't rule it out.