Tormented Vinícius silences critics to swing 'decrepit' clásico Madrid's way | Sid Lowe

First Casemiro told Vinícius Júnior where to go, then Toni Kroos showed him. And so, as it turned out, did Gerard Piqué although that wasn’t what he wanted. With 19 minutes left in the clásico it all came together and the next thing they knew, this kid was standing there in the middle of the mayhem showing everyone the badge on his shirt, a massive grin on his face. There was resurrection and redemption for all of them, and for Vinícius especially. There was a huge roar too, the ball in the net and Real Madrid top of the table, the league they could have lost back in their hands. The psychosis had been blown away: that week they feared ended in triumph.

The goal that allowed Madrid to beat Barcelona in the league for the first time since 2016 began with Kroos slowing to a halt on the left, seeing the pass before anyone else did. After Manchester City had beaten Madrid, the Catalan daily Sport had cheered: “Pep, your hand shows the way”; three days later, Kroos’s hand actually did. As he paused, he pointed, wrist waggling as he repeatedly signalled the space before him. Go, he was saying: go, go, go. Go is what Vinícius does best – what he doesn’t always is the next bit – so off he went, faster than anyone on the field.

Kroos slipped the ball through the gap between Arthur Melo, Martin Braithwaite and Nélson Semedo, pulled out of position by Karim Benzema, and Vinícius ran on to it. As he collected it and ran, his mind might have been drawn to the many, many other times he had done so. It was certainly drawn to what Casemiro had said to him before. In the first half, Vinícius had escaped often, speeding into space, but had too often taken the wrong turn and the wrong decision. A recurring accusation. One he was now about to put to bed, at least momentarily, and in the best place possible.

The Brazilian is exhilarating and exasperating in equal measure, sometimes in the same move, let alone the same game. He is a footballer to embrace one minute and give up on the next, someone to lose your heart to and your head over. Wednesday against City had been just one example: there had been a moment when he had lain there a yard from the goal-line, arms and legs stretched out like a fallen star, an entire stadium looked down upon him wondering what had happened, how he could have not scored from two yards. And yet at the same time not really wondering. They knew the answer: because not scoring is kind of what Vinícius does.

The one source of light in the darkness last season – exciting, daring, willing – a lot of the criticism and the doubts about Vinícius were unfair. They were certainly premature: he’s still only 19. But it was there: not ruthless enough, as if the confidence that flows through everything else he does disappears before goal, his decision-making deficient and his finishing even more so. He needed patience, but there is no time for that.

When he scored against Osasuna in September, Vinícius slipped to his knees and cried. It was his first goal since February, and the pressure had been unbearable, Jorge Valdano imagining him on the “psychiatrist’s couch”. Last week, one newspaper called him an “emporium of dribbles without scoring”. He had slipped from the team too, starting just six league games before Sunday’s clásico and not once in 2020. Zinedine Zidane’s decision to start him on Wednesday surprised and while he provided the perfect assist to make up for that first-half miss against City, Madrid ultimately lost and a clásico start was far from certain.

Him scoring was even less likely. Vinícius hadn’t scored in the league since those tears, and had just three in 36 league games. Maybe there was some Simpsonian philosophy there, too, some self-fulfilling prophecy: can’t win, don’t try. Can’t score, don’t shoot. As if the chances slipped away from him because the belief already had. Casemiro certainly thought so, so he told him as much. And now, here he was again, given a chance to put that advice into practice in the biggest game there is.

As Vinícius headed towards goal, Piqué backed away. “I let him decide,” he admitted after. The Barcelona defender offered Vinícius the shot, covering the cross but exposing the near post as if certain he wouldn’t dare take it on. Maybe he wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for that word. “In the first half I had three chances to shoot and I passed,” Vinícius said afterwards, “Casemiro told me I had to shoot more.” He did shoot and by the time Piqué realised it was too late: he dived at the ball, but only deflected it into the net by the near post. Lucky? Maybe. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been there but for the signal, wouldn’t have shot but for the advice and wouldn’t have scored but for the deflection. But Vinícius had tempted fortune and won.

El País said he had “left behind the caricature”. He is, El Mundo claimed, “a player who is for ever tormented, teetering on the edge, on that invisible line between genius and ridicule. Judgment always hangs over him, a winger unable to make his legs and feet move in unison, but he never gives up and that is a great quality.” Madrid loves a trier; if he succeeds, even more so. “I want to make the fans happy,” Vinícius said, and this time he certainly had. “I’m very pleased for him, he scored an important goal in an important moment,” Zidane said.

He could say that again. The significance of the goal was shown in Casemiro’s celebration – the Brazilian knelt, head down, and beat the turf with his fists. These were “delicate moments”, Zidane had admitted. Madrid had won just once in five games and the spectre of last year loomed. Back then they had lost it all in eight days, their season over at the start of March. This was the hour of truth and the truth hurt: lose, as they had done the last four times Barcelona came, and Madrid would be five points behind, watching another title slip from them. Winning was an obligation. It was also, Zidane said, an “opportunity”.

For Barcelona, it certainly was and in the first half of a clásico that El País said was “deflated, like a burst football” and El Mundo called “decrepit”, Madrid winning hadn’t looked likely. Barcelona dominated possession, slowly applying superiority. If slow was the word, they did make three clear chances – for Antoine Griezmann, Arthur and Lionel Messi. “I made good saves when it was needed,” said Thibaut Courtois. “Fundamental,” Zidane called him. “They pass and pass and pass and then they accelerate. Courtois had to be brilliant a couple of times,” said Emilio Butragueño, the former Madrid striker and now a director.

From potentially five points clear, Barcelona were now second. All too aware of their flaws, the title felt a very long way away. “We wasted a chance to leave them wounded,” Piqué said. “The feeling they gave off in the first half was not good at all. Of all the times I have been here, it was maybe one of the worst I have seen them. It’s not a criticism; we all have our problems and it’s not as if we’re very, very good either. But if we had scored it would have been a mountain too high for them to climb.”

But Barcelona didn’t score and everything changed. “We lost control,” Piqué admitted. “Incomprehensible,” Quique Setién called the collapse. For Madrid, it was better this way.“I’d happily sign up for always winning the clásico like this,” said Sergio Ramos. Zidane’s side stepped it up and Barcelona could not live with it: pushed aside, they couldn’t see out the storm. It had begun with a short corner – won by Vinícius – from which Isco’s superb curling shot met an even better save from Marc-André ter Stegen. Suddenly Madrid were awake and building momentum, electricity flowing, footballers and fans “fused again” in Ramos’s words. The place was a “lunatic asylum, a mad house”, Marca claimed. Madrid’s place, Madrid’s way.

They had responded, rebelled. In part because resurrection is what they do. It is what Zidane does especially; no one revives footballers like him. “I will be with them to the end,” he said after. Mariano Díaz came on for his first appearance all season; 50 seconds later, he had scored to round off an ultimately deserved victory, a look of disbelief and emotion on his face. Isco, whose career at Madrid had looked like it was slipping to the end, had begun it all. He is a central figure now. Marcelo, the surprise inclusion whose Champions League place had gone to Ferland Mendy, took the ball from Messi’s toe near the end. He celebrated as if he had scored a goal – what he had done was actually better.

And then, above all, there was Vinícius, scoring a league goal six months later, to win the clásico here for the first time since 2014. “There’s been so much pressure and haste placed on him,” Ramos said. “You have to play in this stadium and so young: he creates chances permanently and that’s not at all easy,” Butragueno said, adding: “Hopefully this is a liberation for him.” It had been a liberation for all of them. On the touchline at the end, Vinícius stood smiling through the rain. “I’m so happy I feel like a kid,” he said, and not just because he still is. “I knew the goal would arrive at the right moment.”