Vinícius Júnior starts this season with everything settled except the thing he used to be surest of. The contract is signed, the No. 7 is his, and José Mourinho has spent pre-season building a front line around him. What the Brazilian does not have, according to Thursday night’s reporting in Madrid, is the unconditional roar he once took as a given — and he knows it. After years of being adored at the Bernabéu, that is a strange position to be in.
Diario AS report that Vinícius Júnior’s personal objective for the start of LaLiga is to reconcile with the Real Madrid support after the controversy of his renewal, as relayed by Bernabéu Digital. For a player of his standing at this club, that is a striking sentence. It is also an honest one.
What the summer did to Vinicius Junior’s standing
The timeline is the problem. Talks over a new deal opened at the end of last season and then dragged, through spring, through the World Cup, through pre-season, until an agreement arrived only weeks before the opening whistle of the new campaign. Bernabéu Digital’s read is that the delay itself did the damage: a section of the fanbase began to question his madridismo, first over the size of the salary he was asking for, then over the length of time he took to decide, and then over the fact that the Arsenal option was sounded out at all.
None of that is the same as a player wanting to leave, and he did not leave. But Madridistas spent a summer reading about money rather than football, and the mood in the stands cooled in a way it never had before. We tracked the whole saga as it turned, including the breakthrough that finally unlocked the deal.
The World Cup version Mourinho wants back
The football case for optimism is recent and hard to argue with. Vinícius was Brazil’s best player at the World Cup, scoring in every one of their group-stage matches, and Bernabéu Digital say it is precisely that version of the No. 7 Mourinho wants for a full season rather than in bursts. One of the Portuguese’s stated aims since arriving in June has been to get every star in the squad performing at maximum output, and pulling in the same direction.
That is not only about goals. Mourinho’s biggest tactical ask of his two most expensive attackers has been off the ball, a job we looked at in our piece on getting Vinícius and Mbappé to press. A winger who wants the crowd back has an obvious shortcut available to him: be the player who does the unglamorous running as well as the finishing.
It begins on Saturday, away from home
Vinícius wants to be at his sharpest as early as matchday one against Espanyol, according to the same report. There is a small irony in that. The opener is on the road, so the first audience he faces will be a hostile one, and the reconciliation he is chasing cannot properly begin until Madrid are back at Chamartín. If you need the practicalities, here are the kick-off time and TV details for Espanyol vs Real Madrid.
Still, an away performance is not a bad place to start rebuilding a relationship. Nothing shortens a debate at this club faster than a winger running at a full-back and beating him.
This is the smallest of the stories about Vinícius Júnior this summer and, in its way, the most revealing. The billing, the shirt and the salary have all been decided. What he has identified as unfinished business is the bit no contract can fix — and he has given himself one season, starting Saturday, to fix it with goals.
