It seems that Mbappé will land at Real Madrid, and will be considered the top star of the world scene, but he will find competition there, not in the way of PSG, where he met with Neymar and Messi, who were on their way. The Brazilian, to flirt with fame and money. The Argentine, to prepare for the World Cup in Qatar and arrive rested. Mbappé, who has not won the Ballon d’Or, even if it seems strange, will meet two young phenomena, more established and accredited in the team. One is Jude Bellingham, the sensation of the year, and the other, Vinícius, who closed the masterful performance at El Sadar with two goals.
The numbers are coming out, in Madrid, getting closer and closer to the title. He lost a match at the beginning of the season – September 29, against Atlético de Madrid – and since then he has been leading smoothly and with good results for the championship. He passed through El Sadar like an airplane, favored by the defensive incompetence of Osasuna, a forceful team by nature, but disarmed by the vertigo that impressed the Madrid forward and the imposing deployment of Valverde, a player who does not find boundaries in the field. It reaches everywhere, it reaches quickly and it reaches to inflict damage on the opponent.
Madrid’s flawless game puts it in a perfect position to manage the rhythms in the Spanish League and the European Cup, where Manchester City await, the closest thing to the Match of the Year due to the prestige of the two teams, the closest antecedents and the added factor of Guardiola at the head of the English team. Madrid is hypersensitive to the Barça coach.
In Pamplona, ??Vinícius charged the Osasuna. He made a shocking performance, memorable for goals, deployment, insistence, runs and all kinds of skills, especially concreted in the delicate definition of the second goal, a prodigy of finesse that definitively confirms the scale of the progression.
Vinícius arrived at Madrid as a virgin forward project, with many more detractors than defenders during his first season. Overwhelming, unrestrained footballer, oblivious to the subtleties of the game, square-footed in the finish, his enthusiasm moved more condescension and jokes than reasonable expectations.
Real Madrid is quick to make judgments. The catacombs of football are full of players who deserved the same treatment as Vinícius. Hence the singularity of his case, that of a player who has gone from being despised at the beginning to being considered a probable historical figure, a journey that speaks less of his extraordinary progress than of an iron will not to push himself in a club that can compete with anyone.
There is no trace of the one-dimensional, basic striker, who fought with the goal, who in the best of cases moved sympathy for expressiveness. Now he is as fearsome to defenses as the most fearsome forward, Mbappé included. G also has a rare quality: he plays every minute of the match as if it were his last, a walking bomb of energy that repeats efforts, most of them explosive, with an unheard of frequency.
Vinícius, who is already among the four or five best in the world, forces us to wonder about his limits, about the ceilings he invariably breaks every season. His only enemy brings him inside, and it’s not just any rival. Unable to suppress impulses, devoured by the character, he takes his impertinences further and further. In El Sadar he rode, for no reason, the umpteenth sainet, with yellow included, about to turn red due to the mocking contumacy.
