Sergio Ramos Completes Historic and Eventful Match vs Switzerland

Sergio Ramos started and captained Spain in his record-breaking 177th cap. The center back now surpasses Gigi Buffon as the European player with the most caps for their country in all of football history. With each passing game, Sergio Ramos seems to break more and more records.

The historic match would turn out to be quite the eventful game. Remo Fueler scored in the 26th minute to place Switzerland in the driver’s seat. From then on, Switzerland sat back in a deep block looking to counter vs a probing Spain side. Despite dominating possession, and pressing relatively well high up the pitch, Spain struggled to create quality goal-scoring opportunities.

It would be Switzerland who nearly scored a second after breaking through on the counter with Seferović . Unai Simon, the starting Spanish goalkeeper for this match, came sprinting out of his box and perhaps overestimated his ability to reach the ball, allowing Seferović to get a shot off at what seemed like an empty net. Mere seconds later Sergio Ramos arrived with a goal line clearance:

And only two minutes after that goal-line sequence, Spain would earn their first penalty of the match. Sergio Ramos stepped up to take it and hit a tame shot directly to Sommer’s right. It was his first miss after 25 consecutive penalties scored.

The night would take yet another twist. Alvaro Morata who came in and provided an instant spark for Spain, was taken down in the box resulting in another penalty for La Roja. Sergio Ramos once again stepped up and once again missed! It was a poor attempt at a paneka:

Fortunately for Ramos, Sergio Reguilon and Gerard Moreno would combine to save his blushes. A brilliant run down the left flank followed by a inch-perfect curling low cross from Reguilon to Moreno inside the box, resulted in a Spain equalizer. The match ultimately finished 1-1 with Spain now behind Germany by a point in the League A Group 4 Standings. Tuesday’s match vs Germany now leaves everything up for grabs for the two giant footballing nations.

After the match Luis Enrique defended his captain in the post-match press conference:

“Don’t jump on the bandwagon when Ramos scores 25 in a row and then criticize him when he misses. If there had been a third penalty, he would have taken that one as well!”