Where did it all gone wrong for Juande Ramos?
Ramos: Considered a Spurs Failure
Juande Ramos is best known by Premiership fans for his one year spell in charge of Tottenham Hotspur; having arrived from Sevilla where he’d been extremely successful there was great optimism for Spurs under Ramos which seemed warranted at first but then things went wrong and since then Ramos has seen himself appointed manager and two unlikely clubs – only to depart shortly after. Looking at his managerial record, one notices quickly that Ramos has barely ever spent more than one season at a club – a particularly odd trait. Is it that he wants a new challenge and joins a bigger club or simply that the club don’t value him enough to renew his contract or keep him at the club? Ramos has had a share of success and clubs have seemed unafraid to take a punt on him but his record seems strange to say the least.
Ramos did not have the most successful of playing careers, playing for a number of small teams before retiring with injury at the age of just 28. His managerial career started at tiny Alcoyano and he worked his way up, having spells at clubs which included Barcelona’s B team and Rayo Vallecano as he fought his way up to a top flight club’s helm. Within the nine years he spent in lower league management, Ramos only spent more than a year in charge of a club twice. His win record for most of these clubs was impressive and suggests that failure was not the reason why Ramos was moving on so frequently.
The first division beckoned for Ramos though and he got his first taste of it when he took charge of Real Betis in the summer of 2001. Ramos led Betis to a 6th placed finish and thus a place in the UEFA Cup but didn’t have his contract renewed so left the club. He quickly moved onto first division rivals Espanyol but lasted just 2 months in the job, being in charge of 5 competitive games which he won none of. Ramos then had to wait until the next summer to get another managerial role as he took over at Betis’s local rivals Malaga. A year of mixed results resulted in a standard mid-table finish for the Andalucian club and again Ramos was allowed to depart after just one season. He didn’t go far though as he moved up to neighbouring city Sevilla where he would spend the most successful period of his managerial career and the part which led to Tottenham becoming interested in his services.
Sevilla, a club that had been trophyless for a long time prior to Ramos’s arrival, won two UEFA Cups, a European Super Cup, a Spanish Cup and a Spanish Super Cup under his guidance and qualified for a Champion’s League spot too. Ramos began to become a fans favourite despite the fact that his tenure ultimately only spanned two seasons. Notable about Ramos’s reign is that the hard work had already been put into Sevilla by their chairman and their former manager Joaquin Caparros who had turned the club into one capable of finishing in the top 6 and brought some good talent to the team. Ramos did a good job in harnessing the team’s talent and getting them to work at their best to succeed but there is speculation that Sevilla would’ve gotten there anyway even with a different manager as they had been a team on the up for a while.
Then came Ramos’s move to Tottenham where he was greeted with enthusiasm. Good results in his first campaign in charge led to Tottenham fans being happy with his management and he even managed to win the club a trophy in the form of the Carling Cup which gave them a route into Europe for the following season regardless of the lower position they would get following Martin Jol’s poor start to the season. It was Ramos’s poor form at the beginning of the following season that turned him quickly into a villain though and, after just 2 points from 8 games, Ramos got the sack and his reputation had taken a blow.
Which made his next port of call a big shock for just a couple of months after his sacking at Spurs, Ramos was named Real Madrid manager in a shock turn of events. It has always been evident that Ramos’s appointment at Madrid was seen as a short term measure to settle things for the rest of their season before they could go after a big name in the summer and Ramos seemed to do well for them at first, helping the club to close the gap at the top of the table on league leaders Barcelona with 49 points from 51 available in 17 games. A run of poor results followed including a 6 – 2 home defeat against Barca and Ramos’s stock was down again. His contract at Real was unsurprisingly not renewed.
Then in September Ramos was given his latest job as he became manager of Russian giants CSKA Moscow. One of the leading powers of Russian football, CSKA expect a better record than 4 wins from 9 games but that is what Ramos gave them in his start to the season and he was given no second chances and was sacked just over a month after joining the club. His latest appointment has proven as disappointing as so many of his previous ones.
Exile from Russia has proven the latest failure for a man who has won a number of trophies and was once loved by Sevilla fans and by Tottenham fans before being turned on by both (Sevilla fans resented his departure to Tottenham) whilst he has managed to be involved in a title chase while in charge of Real Madrid. Yet the man is viewed as a poor manager and something of a joke. Is he? His form has been disappointing and his short tenures at the clubs he’s managed has suggested that the chairmen don’t keep faith in him but there must be a reason Ramos has gotten all these high profile jobs and trophies. Is the man lucky? If so why has his career declined? And where will his next port of call be? Something tells me he won’t be managing a big team any time soon but, given the reins of a slightly smaller team, Ramos could soon be getting his reputation back and trying to justify how he’s been given such high profile jobs and that the decline of his career is not his end. If he can manage it that is.
Related articles
Rate it:
I’m not sure Ramos won the Carling cup entirely on his own merits. He won it with essentially Jol’s team and it was likely Spurs would have done OK in the competition regardless.
The poor results under Ramos also started long before the start of the second season. After winning the Carling cup the team barely won another game for the rest of the season…
Results actually were poor under Ramos from the beginning, not just after the Carling Cup. There was a short period just before Xmas when we won 4 out of 5, but that was it. From Jan onwards results were very poor.