Sergio Ramos returned for Real Madrid on Saturday but the bigger question is whether he is back for good.
After two months out with a knee injury, Ramos played an hour in Madrid’s win over Elche, with the plan to blow away the cobwebs ready for a start against Atalanta in the second leg of the Champions League on Tuesday.
His availability should be a significant boost for Madrid, who have a 1-0 advantage from last month’s first leg in Italy and will be confident of being Spain’s first, and perhaps only, survivor in the tournament’s quarter-finals.
And yet Ramos’s reemergence has been pinpointed less as a boost to his team than a bolstering of his case to stay, every week he was absent another blow to his hope for a contract extension beyond the summer.