Real Madrid have endured one of their worst ever starts to a season as they sit at the tenth position after 11 games
The European Champions have won just 4 games in the league, and have lost just as many. And while goal scoring has been an obvious problem for them, their defense hasn’t been great either as was evident in the 1-5 drubbing at the hands of FC Barcelona in their last league outing. And the Los Blancos captain Sergio Ramos has to shoulder a lot of the blame for that. He has been very poor and Barcelona exploited that as they put five past them.
World Cup finalist and Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren knows all about being the subject of criticism. He said, “People always catch you on these mistakes, they don’t look [at the] good things,” said Lovren in an interview with Copa 90 . “Sometimes I think I don’t deserve the hate, I would say.
If you look, Ramos, he has many more mistakes than me. But he’s at Real Madrid. When you do a mistake, but you win 5-1, 5-2, nobody sees the mistake. You know what I mean. I’m, like, quite unlucky. When I make the mistake it’s 1-0 and finish. But like I said, I carry on.”
On being asked about the best defender he said. “Virgil [van Dijk], I would say, because we had a great season,”
He also said that Varane was a much better defender than Ramos, “Me and him, we reached the final of the Champions League. I would say Varane, he deserves a lot of credit. But I think he doesn’t get it as much. Ramos gets it and I don’t agree with that. Definitely. For me, at this moment and previous years, yeah.”3
Author’s take
Given the kind of form that Ramos has been in lately, it has to be said that Lovren certainly has a point. However, we all know that Ramos is a defender of the highest calibre and he will bounce back.
