It seems that Mbappé will land at Real Madrid and will do so with the consideration of the top star on the world scene, but he will find competition, not in the way of PSG, where he met with Neymar and Messi, who were doing their thing. The Brazilian, to fool around 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, strange as it may seem, 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 his masterful performance at El Sadar with two goals.
Madrid’s numbers are coming up, getting closer and closer to the title. He lost a game in the middle 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 rocky team by nature, but disarmed by the vertigo of Madrid’s forward line and the imposing display of Valverde, a ubiquitous player who finds no limits on the field. He reaches everywhere, he arrives fast and he arrives to inflict damage on the opponent.
Madrid’s impeccable performance puts it in a perfect position to handle the rhythms in the Spanish League and in the European Cup, where Manchester City awaits, the closest thing to the game of the year due to the prestige of the two teams, the antecedents closer and the added factor of Guardiola leading the English team. Madrid is hypersensitive to the Barça coach.
In Pamplona, ??Vinícius took Osasuna ahead. He produced an impressive performance, memorable for goals, display, insistence, runs and all kinds of skills, especially embodied in the delicate definition of his second goal, a prodigy of finesse that definitively confirms the scale of his progression.
Vinícius arrived at Madrid as a virgin forward project, with many more detractors than defenders in his first season. An overwhelming footballer, without restraint, oblivious to the subtleties of the game, square footed in the shot, his enthusiasm moved more to condescension and jokes than to reasonable expectations.
Real Madrid fans are quick in their 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 initial contempt to the consideration of a probable historical figure, a journey that speaks less of his extraordinary progress than of an iron will not to shrink in a club that can shrink To anybody.
There is no trace left of the one-dimensional, basic forward, who fought for the goal, who in the best of cases inspired sympathy for his expressiveness. He is now as fearsome for defenses as the most fearsome of forwards, Mbappé included. He also enjoys an unusual quality: he plays every minute of the game as if it were his last, a walking bomb of energy that repeats his efforts, most of them explosive, with unprecedented frequency.
Vinícius, who is already among the four or five best in the world, forces us to ask ourselves about his limits, about the ceilings that he invariably breaks every season. His only enemy is within him and he is not just any rival. Unable to suppress his impulses, devoured by his character, he takes his impertinence further and further. In El Sadar he staged, for no reason, his umpteenth farce, with yellow included, on the verge of turning reddish due to his mocking contumacy.
