Solari: “Ramos meant he wanted to force the foul, not the yellow card”

Real Madrid coach Santiago Solari talked to the press ahead of the team’s match against Girona in La Liga. The Argentinian manager explained Ramos’ words after Wednesday’s game in Amsterdam, where the defender saw a yellow card.

“Ramos has explained what happened. I won’t try to imagine what some videos meant. Ramos answered a tricky question, you reporters have your own ways to get players say what you want them to say,” explained Solari.

The coach is referring too Ramos admitting that he wanted to get booked so that he could be available for the first leg of the Champions League Quarterfinals —if Real Madrid take care of business against Ajax in the Bernabeu—. Ramos’ foul was fairly usual and nobody would have suspected anything, but the captain delivered the following words after the game.

“It’s something I thought about, sometimes you have to make decisions and that’s what I did,” he said when asked about if he wanted to see the yellow card.

He then published a tweet explaining his words.

“Many things happen during a football game. Sometimes you make decisions in a heartbeat. The best thing for us was the final score and the worst the fact that I will miss the return leg because of a foul. I want to make clear that it hurts me to miss this game, I did not force that yellow card just as I didn’t do it in my previous game against Roma. I will support my teammates as just another fan,” he wrote.

UEFA is investigating Ramos’ foul and words to the reporter and could suspend the defender for an additional game, meaning that he could miss the opening leg of the Quarterfinals if the committee believe he was indeed trying to get booked.