Sergio Ramos has urged Gerard Pique to “respect” Real Madrid after growing tired of “all the unnecessary nonsense” involving the Barcelona defender.
Pique became embroiled in another war of words with Madrid as he branded Alvaro Arbeloa an acquaitaince and a derogatory term in a play-on-words with ‘conocido’, and Ramos urged his Spain teammate to stop with the provocations for the sake of La Roja.
“To Pique, all I can say is that he must respect Real Madrid and his fellow professionals,” he said after Los Blancos’ 1-0 defeat to Villarreal in La Liga on Sunday.
“Disrespect creates a bad atmosphere, and we’ve had good examples in recent years like [Carles] Puyol, Xavi [Hernandez], Raul [Gonzalez] and Iker [Casillas], from whom we’ve learned to avoid all the unnecessary nonsense.
“I admire Pique, he’s my colleague in the national team and it’d be wrong to say anything else.
“When you lose, it’s easy to talk. When results aren’t going well, that’s when you must be more united.
“The League is very long and football takes many turns. We’re frustrated about wasting the opportunity of reducing the deficit, but we must move on and learn from what happened.
“I won’t give a specific explanation of what happened, but when the team come together, we normally show strength, spirit and desire to compete.
“In the second half, we played like a great team, but when you show uncertainty in your play [referring to the first half], [defeats like these] happen.
“We must show continuity in our game, but we shouldn’t blame anyone.
“Everyone is responsible to a degree. We must move on and continue working hard.”
