It was hardly a whodunnit.
Copa del Rey final referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea already had his eyes trained on the Real Madrid dugout, mentally calibrating his response to the waves of anger rolling in his direction from several of Carlo Ancelotti’s players and staff in the final seconds of a match Barcelona had won in extra time, when the injured Antonio Rudiger took a stumbling run-up and launched what appeared to be an ice cube towards him.
Barcelona midfielder Fermin Lopez helpfully offered himself up as a corroborating witness to the act. De Burgos Bengoetxea came over to the touchline and flashed his red card. The wide eyes of Rudiger, being forcibly restrained from the referee, flashed red in response. Still struggling to break free and presumably in search of further ammunition, he first ripped off the ice pack strapped to his right knee, then the one wrapped around his left.
His fury gained such force that it quickly outstripped the collective wrath of Real Madrid, and the crowd of concerned team-mates and staff around him swelled. All of them recognised what they were seeing; it recalled the words Rudiger had jokingly uttered into a microphone from a balcony overlooking a swarm of adoring supporters in the Puerta del Sol during the club’s celebrations after winning La Liga last May: “El Loco esta aqui!”
The madman is here.
Rudiger emerges behind Carlo Ancelotti to berate the official (Jose Luis Contreras/Dax Images/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“El Loco” is not an alter ego, the Incredible Hulk to Rudiger’s resting Bruce Banner. It has become his affectionate nickname in Madrid over the last three years because it is part of who he always is, not a temporary state of mind and body.
The madness is bound inextricably to the brilliance that has powered his rise to this stage, two core components of the same relentless motor that makes him such a revered team-mate and such a respected opponent.
Condemnation of Rudiger’s latest transgression has been swift, within Spain and well beyond.
Rafael van der Vaart, formerly of Real Madrid, offered perhaps the most withering assessment during a discussion of the incident on Dutch TV channel Ziggo Sports.
“He is a really nice guy to have in your team, but this is also part of him,” Van der Vaart said of Rudiger. “He is a bit of a nice idiot. Sometimes he is nice and sometimes he is an idiot. Today, he is an idiot. This is a (mental) patient, you know. It is (good) that he is being held, because what would happen (if not)?”
Van der Vaart has his own history with Rudiger. In the 84th minute of a 3-3 draw between Hamburg and Stuttgart in October 2013, the 20-year-old Rudiger tainted his emergence as one of Germany’s brightest young defenders by punching the Dutchman in the ribs. The punishment that followed the straight red card was a five-match ban in recognition that he was a serial offender, having been sent off for violent conduct against Greuther Furth five months earlier.
Referee Tobias Welz dismisses Rudiger for his clash with the stricken Van der Vaart (Ronny Hartmann/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Two more red cards, in the German third tier as a teenager for Stuttgart’s second team, did not help how people judged Rudiger. In an interview with Bild in 2014, Rudiger revealed he had sought “professional help” for his indiscipline, adding: “I showed last season that I’m tough on the ball, but fair to my opponent.”
Many players over the last 11 years would likely question the sincerity of the second part of that declaration — most recently Myles Lewis-Skelly, whose lower midriff provided a convenient landing spot for the studs of Rudiger’s left boot during the second leg of Real Madrid’s Champions League quarter-final clash with Arsenal at the Bernabeu last month.
Rudiger escaped punishment for that incident, and one of the more surprising facts about his career is that the Copa del Rey final red card is his first for eight years, covering the entirety of his Chelsea career and almost three full seasons in Madrid. He has broadly succeeded in keeping his predilections for provocation and intimidation on the edge of legality, enabling both to enhance his defensive dominance.
During his time in England, Rudiger’s aggression made him a firm favourite at Stamford Bridge as well as a key contributor to trophy-winning teams.
Manchester City supporters have never forgiven him for the bodycheck that forced a tearful Kevin De Bruyne to exit the 2021 Champions League final in Porto with acute nose bone and left orbital fractures. Many Chelsea fans will never forget the spectacular slide he made to block the Belgian’s goal-bound shot earlier in the match.
Rudiger has issued a public apology to De Bruyne, as he has to De Burgos Bengoetxea. He is self-aware and generally fulfils the traditional role of ‘s***house’ with a smile and often a hilarious goofiness, sometimes adopting a silly run when racing opponents, frequently attempting shots from ludicrously long range and dancing outlandishly in the dressing room after victories.
Rudiger. 🏃💨#FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/MQHJCvKpEE
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) January 24, 2025
Yet he can also be an intensely serious figure, as uncompromising a competitor in training as he is in matches.
Reports of a bust-up with Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta in the final weeks of Frank Lampard’s first stint as head coach were denied, but successor Thomas Tuchel had to remove Rudiger from one of his sessions after a late tackle on goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga during a small-sided game escalated to a heated shoving match.
None of it undermined Rudiger’s dressing room popularity at Chelsea. Academy youngsters Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori were among several who referred to him as ‘Big Bro’, and he was the one who decided to video call the injured Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi on FaceTime after Chelsea’s 4-1 win over Arsenal in the Europa League final in 2019 to make sure they were part of the celebrations in Baku.
Antonio Mateu Lahoz books Rudiger for his challenge on De Bruyne in the 2021 Champions League final (David Ramos/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
It has been a similar story at Real Madrid, where widespread reports in the Spanish media of a training ground bust-up between Rudiger and Jude Bellingham had to be denied before the second leg against Arsenal last month.
Endrick also dedicated his two goals in extra time against Celta Vigo in the Copa del Rey in January to the Germany international. “He knows what we do together every day,” the Brazilian 18-year-old said of Rudiger. “He never gives me praise and that’s not a bad thing for me. It’s very good because he tells me what I have to do. He has been a great person with me since I arrived.”
Rudiger’s goofiness endures, too. Unsuspecting team-mates who score in matches often get slapped around the back and the neck, as does Real Madrid’s unfortunate kitman. The intent appears playful rather than bullying even if, you sense, the enjoyment is not always entirely mutual.
Above all, at Madrid’s Valdebebas HQ, as it was at Cobham with Chelsea, Rudiger is a man everyone else wants to play with rather than compete against.
Real Madrid’s announcement on Tuesday that Rudiger had undergone an operation to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee, before a six-match ban for his aggression towards De Burgos Bengoetxea was handed down, briefly felt like one final act of disrespect from player and club. Surgery would certainly be a novel form of gamesmanship.
In reality, the rationale was strictly pragmatic.
Rudiger had been taking painkillers just to train and revealed in an Instagram statement on Tuesday that he had been playing with “severe pain” for seven months.
Madrid’s four-point deficit to Barcelona at the top of La Liga and the prospect of a lengthy suspension removed any reason to further delay treatment, and a six-week recovery timeframe keeps him in contention to play in the expanded Club World Cup this summer, and possibly even Germany’s clash with Portugal in the UEFA Nations League semi-finals on June 4.
Rudiger is hugely respected by his team-mates at Real Madrid (Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images)
This is not Rudiger’s first meniscus injury, though thankfully it is in the opposite knee to the anterior cruciate ligament he tore while a Roma player in the summer of 2016. When he suffered that setback, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez sent him a surprise letter wishing him a speedy recovery — an early sign that his career was turning important heads.
Rudiger is 32 now, nine years further on a journey that has made him a two-time Champions League winner and a key player for the world’s biggest football club.
The same force of personality that prompted him to erupt at the end of the Copa del Rey final also led him to step up and convert Real Madrid’s fifth and winning penalty in a breathlessly dramatic Champions League round-of-16 penalty shootout against city rivals Atletico Madrid, then jubilantly sprint the length of the Metropolitano pitch with, as it turns out, a significant knee injury.
The madness and the brilliance are one and the same.
“El Loco” has been punished, and rightly so. He will also be cherished by those who know that no team wins without a character like him.
(Top photo: Pedro Loureiro/Sports Press Photo/Getty Images)