The clock struck 72, and the assistant referee’s board flashed 7 and 11. Vinicius Junior, the No 7, could not believe his El Clasico was over. He gestured wildly at the referee and at the bench, asking if it indeed was him or a communication error. No one uttered a word, and he knew it was indeed him. In his reluctant, lonely trudge to the tunnel, he swished his palms in anger, shrugged away the consolatory arm from a support staff, didnot turn half a gaze at his manager Xabi Alonso, did not greet the incoming Rodrygo and stormed down the stairs. Nearly 30 minutes later, after the final minutes blew, Vinicius made his last cameo of the night, chest puffed and eyes bloodshot to confront Lamine Yamal, before he was calmed by compatriot Rafinha and Madrid’s support staff.
It was a night that saw the best and worst of Vinicius, a one-man allegory of the game itself, which fluctuated between brilliance and madness, genius and the clumsy. The flash point of the Vinicius-Yamal showdown arguably, there could have been several other instances in the Real Madrid-Barcelona faceoff too, was the overturned penalty in the second minute of the fractious game that had abundant drama as well as pantomime villainy.
The referee thought Yamal’s dangling foot had caught Vinicius in the box, but the VAR contended that it could have been Vinicius that kicked Yamal and not the other way around. In magnified slow-motion replays, the Spaniard’s toe was onto the ball first (or so the VAR deemed), and chants of “Negreira, Negreira…” rang in the stands, alluding to the alleged corruption scandal involving Barcelona’s payment to a firm linked to the former vice president of the technical committee of referees of Spanish Football Federation. Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. Or it could have been Yamal’s trash talk before the game: “Yes, they steal, they complain all the time.”
From that moment the penalty was chalked off, Vinicius became an agitated man, finding a reason to fight and complain about everything. He would throw his arm up whenever someone did not pass at him, he would argue with the referee with little provocation. He did not let the petulance affect him, he buzzed on the vast expanse on the left side of Real Madrid and spectacularly held the width. He conceptualised the second goal, even if inadvertently. His looping cross split the wobbly Barcelona backline, but seemed a fraction over-hit but for Militao’s opportunism. He headed the ball back from across the touchline for Jude Bellingham to tuck the ball home. His high positioning and tricky runs played an influential role in foiling Barcelona’s high defensive line to catch the opponent forwards offside by the thread-barest margins.
But his temper poses a problem to Alonso, as had several gifted footballers to managers. It was not the first time Vinicius had combusted on the field. He was similarly enraged when he was subbed in the Champions League game against Olympiakos last month. Under Alonso, he has played the full 90 minutes only thrice in 13 games across all tournaments. Such insecurities are understandable in the early months of a new manager. Alonso has repeatedly praised his virtues and once admitted that he regretted taking him off prematurely. A section of the Spanish media, though, claims that Vinicius is feeling insecure like he was during the days of Zinedine Zidane.
Those were days when Vinicius felt lonely at the club. Some of the players, he felt, did not like him. Rumours of disharmony escalated when the cameras caught striker Karim Benzema telling left-back Ferland Mendy about Vinicius: “He’s playing against us. Don’t pass to him, brother.” Then arrived Carlo Ancelotti, who he calls a father figure. Though Benzema was around, and Kylian Mbappe yet to come, the venerable Italian manager, a connoisseur of individual talents, forged his strategies to harness the best out of Vinicius. Under him, Madrid sat deep to draw sides forward, to cut open spaces for Vinicius to spearhead counterattacking. The ice broke between him and Benzema, and when the Frenchman departed, they were good friends. “Today, he is the most decisive player in world football. There is no other player with that kind of consistency,” Ancelotti said at the end of the 2023-24 season.
But managers change; so do roles. Alonso has dropped him back, redeployed him at times like a classical winger, feeding balls to Mbappe. That he has netted five goals in 10 league games is a testament to his finishing skills, but this season he has been a restrained force, effective and diligent but not ethereal as he was in the 2023-24 season.
The frustration manifests as rage on the field. How Vinicius deals with Alonso’s tactics and how Alonso manages to harness the best from one of his most influential players would be a fascinating subplot in Real Madrid’s season of potential redemption. Alonso is not a taskmaster who dispenses tough love like Alex Ferguson. Wayne Rooney once said: “I always had a great relationship with the manager but there were times in most games at half-time where me and the manager were at each other. He knew, by doing that to me, he was getting a message to the other players. Always after the game, the manager might walk down to the bus and give me a slap on the back of the head. It was his way of saying: ‘That’s over.’”
He is not like Jurgen Klopp either. The German fostered a close personal relationship with his players, taking them out for dinner and talking personal stuff. Alonso is more like the modern-day manager, corporate style in his operations with bonding sessions, but with a deep and forensic understanding of his players’ strengths. Jerome Frimpong, one of his key players in Bayer Leverkusen, would say: “When he has an idea, he can make it make sense to all the players. I always feel like he knows how to use my abilities — like running into space, one-on-ones, counter-attacks. It’s things like that. But it’s like that for everyone. Ask anyone in the team: they’ll all tell you the same thing.”
The methods, though, worked differently for different players. Steven Gerrard’s best years were under Rafa Benitez, a hard-nosed manager, largely detached from his players. But the English midfielder liked his frostiness, which he says fired him up to perform. “An emotionless and distant relationship with the likes of Rafa Benítez and Fabio Capello can sometimes produce more success,” he wrote in his autobiography. Alonso has to figure that out first. What fires Vinicius up, the hug or the indifference, or the hair dryer. He is a talent he cannot afford to lose, yet he cannot tolerate his tantrums.
It was a night that saw the best and worst of Vinicius, a one-man allegory of the El Clasico itself, which fluctuated between brilliance and madness, genius and the clumsy. (AP) 
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