For many years, Vinicius Junior has affirmed his position as one of the best players in the world.
Growing up from the Flamengo training academy, Vinicius's talent quickly attracted the attention of European "giants". When he was only 16 years old, he was in Real Madrid's sights. Although not yet old enough to transfer, the Royal Spanish team still agreed to spend 38 million pounds to reach an agreement in advance, before officially bringing him to Santiago Bernabeu in 2018, when he turned 18 years old.
At that time, Vinicius became the Brazilian player with the second highest transfer fee in history, only after Neymar when he left Santos to join Barcelona for a price of about 48.6 million pounds.
This is also the highest fee ever paid to a player under 19 years old at that time, showing the great faith that Real Madrid placed in the young Brazilian star.
And Vinicius did not disappoint the Royal team. To date, he has scored 77 goals and had 41 assists in 242 matches in La Liga, averaging 0.64 goals per 90 minutes.
Vinicius's collection of titles is also extremely massive, including three La Liga titles, two Spanish King's Cups, two Champions Leagues and a series of personal titles.
In particular, he has scored in the last 2 Champions League finals he has participated in, helping Real Madrid defeat Liverpool in the 2021-2022 season and Borussia Dortmund in the 2023-2024 season.
Vinicius even lacked a bit of luck to win the 2024 Golden Ball, before the title belonged to Rodri of Manchester City.
At the 2026 World Cup, the star born in 2000 is playing the best football in the national team jersey. However, that does not always happen.
For many years, Vinicius has often been criticized for not being able to reproduce his peak form at Real Madrid when wearing the Brazilian national team jersey.
According to Brazilian football expert Marcus Alves, fans expect Vinicius to become the leader of Selecao after the Neymar era: "Everyone thinks that at this point, he must be the most important factor of the Brazilian team. However, 4 years after the defeat to Croatia at the 2022 World Cup, doubts have not disappeared.
Many former Brazilian players also believe that Vinicius is under too much pressure when trying to replace Neymar's role.
Fabio Luciano, former Brazilian international, commented: "Vinicius's problem is that when Neymar is not playing, he thinks he has to become Neymar. That is too much burden.
He doesn't need to do everything. The team must share responsibility. Let Vinicius be himself and promote what he does best".
It was not until his 19th appearance for the national team that Vinicius scored his first goal for Brazil, in the victory over Chile in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
Before the 2026 World Cup, his achievements at major tournaments were quite modest. Through three tournaments including Copa America 2021, World Cup 2022 and Copa America 2024, Vinicius only scored 3 goals and had two assists after 617 minutes of play.
Overall, after 49 appearances for the national team before this year's tournament, Vinicius only participated in one goal after each 2 matches. Professional stats are also not really outstanding when he only creates an average of 2.5 shots and 1.5 chances every 90 minutes in Brazil's colors.
But the 2026 World Cup is witnessing a completely different Vinicius. After only the first 4 matches, the Real Madrid striker has scored 4 goals and had one assist, thereby rising to the group competing for the Golden Boot title.
Opta assesses Brazil has a 9.1% chance of winning the 2026 World Cup. If Vinicius can lead Selecao to conquer the gold cup, all doubts that once surrounded him in the national team jersey will completely disappear.
