AS Sergio Ramos headed towards Real Madrid’s team bus in the early hours of Sunday morning, he was asked if he had a comment for the English press.
Football’s most inglorious b*****d simply nodded at the European Cup he was cradling in his arms and winked.
Debate was still raging as to whether the Spanish hard man had deliberately nobbled Mo Salah, forcing Liverpool’s most potent player to exit in tears after just 29 minutes of the Champions League final — jeopardising the Egyptian’s participation at the World Cup in the process.
Ramos had pinned Salah by the arm and forced him to the ground, injuring a shoulder — yet no foul was given.
The Real centre-half looked as if butter wouldn’t melt, as if the deed had been done by a shadowy man on a grassy knoll.
Had two different players been involved, we might have written it off as a terrible accident.
Yet Salah was the prime target for a hitman’s attack and Real Madrid’s captain is a footballer who lives by the assassin’s creed.
A dead-eyed, stone-hearted, cold-blooded villain.
If you wish to glamorise his violence, you could argue that Spanish defender Ramos has a black belt in the dark arts, that his nastiness is masterful.
As well as the Salah incident, he was also responsible for a shocking piece of play-acting in an attempt to get Sadio Mane in trouble and an apparent barge on blunder keeper Loris Karius.
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And, of course, when you’re a good enough footballer to have won four Champions Leagues you cannot exist on spite alone.
Yet a record of TWENTY-FOUR red cards suggests he is not exactly the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Plenty of the time his brutality is carried out brazenly in broad daylight.
Ramos later sent out a get-well-soon tweet to Salah, yet it contained no actual remorse.
“Sometimes football shows you its good side and other times the bad. Above all, we are fellow pros.”
Professionalism, of course, has a double meaning — one of which suggests arch cynicism.
Liverpool’s supporters might want to remember that their club’s own history was built on meanness as well as majesty.
They won European Cups with the likes of Jimmy Case, Tommy Smith and Graeme Souness in their ranks — although Souness was the perfect combination of silk and steel.
It’s just that this breed of hatchet men have been brought to the brink of extinction by modern refereeing which allows flair to flourish without fear of maiming.
They are supposed to be old rogues to be laughed about on the after-dinner circuit.
Now it is all about the wondrous talents of men like Gareth Bale.
His pyrotechnic first goal was so spectacular that a stuntman ought to have carried it out on his behalf.
And it was fitting it should have proved the decisive goal, between Karius’ two moments of wretched humiliation.
Yet make no mistake, Ramos played every bit as important a role as Bale in securing Real Madrid’s 13th European Cup.
Loathe him, hate him or secretly admire him, Ramos is an extraordinary throwback of a footballer. History made flesh.
When he’s done, we ought to exhibit him at the London Dungeon and let the children gawp.
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