Vinicius Jr: Road to 2026 World Cup After Real Madrid Struggles

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup on the horizon, eyes are on Brazilian superstar Vinicius Jr. After a tumultuous period at Real Madrid that included a controversial Ballon d’Or rejection, a subsequent dip in form, and challenges under new management, can the winger reclaim his spot at the pinnacle of world football? This article explores the highs and lows of Vinicius Jr.’s career, from his breakthrough under Carlo Ancelotti and his powerful stand against racism to his current struggles and his path toward the 2026 World Cup with the Brazilian national team.

By Andy Murray

Vinicius Jr: After Ballon d’Or rejection, how does the Brazilian climb the mountain?

Vinicius Jr had just run two-thirds of the length of the Bernabeu pitch, and still, he wasn’t done. Picking up the ball halfway inside his own half, the Real Madrid winger had left Borussia Dortmund captain Emre Can trailing in his wake before sashaying inside towering centre-back Niklas Sule and caressing the ball into the corner for his second goal of the game. On this sweltering October 2024 evening, he threw his shirt into the air and pointed to the floor as if to say: “I’m here and not going anywhere.” Real Madrid 4-2 Borussia Dortmund, four minutes to go.

Yet still, the Brazilian wanted more. Moments later, Vinicius Jr won the ball back high, twisted defender Waldemar Anton’s blood and lashed a left-footed strike into the roof of the net to complete his hat-trick and enjoy the crowd’s adulation all over again. Los Blancos, having trailed 2-0 after an hour, had just won 5-2 thanks to their prodigiously gifted No7. “A hat-trick from the next Ballon d’Or,” wrote Madrid-based sports daily Marca the following day.

Vinicius had seemingly scaled football’s highest peak. The following week was the ceremony for the beautiful game’s biggest individual prize, with Vinicius the overwhelming favourite. Real Madrid had romped to the 2023/24 La Liga by 10 points and won the Champions League. Vinicius had 35 goals and assists combined in 39 appearances in all competitions, he had scored in the Champions League final (also against Dortmund) and had been the standout attacking player in European club football.

Yet it all unravelled. In a fit of spectacular pique, when Real Madrid discovered on the grapevine that Premier League and EURO 2024-winning midfielder Rodri – who had gone on a 74-game unbeaten run for Manchester City and Spain – and not Vinicius would win the Ballon D’Or, they announced they would not attend. “Real Madrid does not go where it is not respected,” flounced a statement that presumably a grown adult had to sit at a computer and actually type out.

What should have been the crowning moment of his career precipitated arguably its most significant barren run. After the turn of the year, Vinicius scored just eight times in all competitions as his performances fell off a cliff to leave Madrid without a major title. Combined with a lack of understanding with Kylian Mbappe, who also prefers to operate from the same inside-left forward pocket that Vinicius considers his best position, such diminishing returns have even led to suggestions that the Brazilian may soon be for a Bernabeu exit under new manager Xabi Alonso’s high-pressing new era that doesn’t necessarily suit Vinicius’ off-the-cuff talents.

Anyone who has witnessed even a nanosecond of the Brazilian’s brilliance on a football pitch will know these effervescent gifts to be myriad. Born to a poor Catholic family in the São Goncalo district near Rio de Janeiro – separated from the sprawling city limits by the Guanabara Bay – Vinicius began playing small-sided futsal locally, then after numerous trials impressed Rio giants Flamengo enough to join the Mengao from the age of 10. Often deployed at left-back, the youngster’s ability to glide past opposition players at pace guaranteed a relocation further forward. The smile with which he played entranced as much as the sinuous virtuosity with a ball at his feet.

In March 2017, he won the Golden Boot and Golden Ball as Brazil took the South American U17 title to escalate his reputation from star of the Flamengo academy to ‘the New Neymar’ according to the Spanish press, with an attainable as the vultures circled. That May, Real Madrid swooped and closed a €45m deal to sign Vinicius the following year, when he turned 18. He had played just 17 minutes of senior football.

Before he left for the Spanish capital, Vinicius scored 14 goals in 69 Flamengo outings. Under pressure to back up the significant fee already paid for him, the teenager improved but his inherent individualism and taunting of opposition players, from goading them with how he was going to beat them to ‘crying’ celebrations after scoring, brought questions that have persisted. “Too much individualism, not enough teamwork,” said Flamengo legend Dejan Petkovic at the time, yet when Vinicius left, the Mengao were second in the Brazilian top flight.

Initially in Madrid, Vinicius was allowed to develop in Santi Solari’s second string. There was a strategy of adaptation, but when Solari replaced Julen Lopetegui as interim boss halfway through the 2018/19 season, the youngster was elevated to the starting XI. Though Solari’s replacement Zinedine Zidane was never truly convinced by Vinicius – preferring Eden Hazard, a big-money flop whose signing he had personally championed – there was the odd moment where the out-of-favour winger’s talent shone through regardless. Turning future Madrid team-mate Trent Alexander-Arnold inside-out with two goals in a 2020/21 Champions League quarter-final first leg against Liverpool was a case in point, but it was the following campaign in which Vinicius both broke through to the elite and found his coaching spirit animal.

Carlo Ancelotti is very much a system-second manager. A smooth midfield technician as a player, the Italian’s coaching philosophy has always been to play his best, most talented footballers first and work out a formation after that. In Vinicius, Ancelotti saw the one-on-one dribbler he craved, trusted his talent and found a way to compensate for any inability (or unwillingness) to track back. On his return to the Bernabeu dugout, six years after his first spell, Ancelotti was rewarded with a first La Liga title and another Champions League title to go with the European crown he won in 2013/14.

Vinicius was electric. The Brazilian scored 22 goals and laid on a further 17 assists in 55 games in all competitions, started each of Los Blancos’ 13 outings in the Champions League and scored the only goal in the final to beat Liverpool, leading Neymar to declare him the world’s best player, ahead of Karim Benzema, who would go on to win the 2022 Ballon d’Or. “I think I’ve improved in many things, but above all in my calmness in my play, I’m doing things with more tranquillity and more quality too,” said Vinicius.

Though Madrid’s trophy cabinet swelled only to the tune of the Copa del Rey in 2022/23, Vinicius improved yet further on his career-best numbers with 23 goals and 19 assists from as many matches as the campaign before. Off the field, the then 22-year-old also became a household name, albeit for reasons he would rather forget. Part of the discussion around Vinicius has been his individualism and riling of opposition players and fans, yet the latter’s response has sometimes crossed the line into something more sinister.

In January 2023, they were just outright racist. In the build-up to the Madrid derby against Atletico in the Copa del Rey quarter-finals, a group of radical Colchonero fans hung a 16-metre red-and-white banner reading “Madrid hates Real” from a bridge, with a mannequin painted black hanging beneath and bearing ‘Vinicius 7’ on the back. In the Madrid derby the previous September, Vinicius had been ‘welcomed’ to Atletico’s Metropolitano ground with chants of “Vinicius is a monkey”. It took two-and-a-half years for the four members of the Frente Atletico radical group responsible for the effigy to be found and tried; each received jail time, with one defendant sentenced to 15 months for a hate crime and an additional seven months for making threats.

Nor was it the only example in 2022/23. Later in May 2023, Vinicius was sent off against Valencia at Mestalla for thrusting an arm into Hugo Duro’s face. Earlier in the match, Vinicius had been subject to more racist abuse on the way into the ground, monkey chants when he received the ball, and in the second half was on the verge of tears as he pointed to a fan in the crowd, saying “he did this”, accusing the Che supporter of calling him “a monkey”. He had his team’s unwavering support. “You want to talk about football?! Or shall we talk about the other thing?” Ancelotti asked reporters after the 1-0 defeat. “That’s more important than a loss, don’t you think?” La Liga also condemned the chants.

“It wasn’t the first time, nor the second, nor the third,” said Vinicius at full-time. “I will go up against the racists until the very end.” His maternal ancestors trace to the Tikar people of Cameroon, and he has become a mouthpiece in the stand against racism because he didn’t want others to experience what he has so often. Eight-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton spoke up in solidarity with him, as did footballers Didier Drogba, Kylian Mbappe and Nico Williams, plus Brazilian legends Ronaldo, Neymar and Raphinha. In Brazil, anti-racism legislation, ‘Vini Jr. laws’ were passed in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul to give power to suspend sporting events in the event of racist abuse. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, never one to miss out on a PR opportunity, selected Vinicius to lead the world governing body’s anti-racism committee composed of players.

Spurred on by those harrowing past experiences, Vinicius enjoyed his finest season in 2023/24. It wasn’t just the 35 goals and assists in 39 appearances as Madrid swept to a Liga-Champions League double, or even scoring in the final of the latter to become the first Brazilian to register in two different European Cup showpieces. It was doing all that while wearing the Blanco No.7 shirt he had finally inherited from Cristiano Ronaldo at the start of that campaign. Such optics matter at the Bernabeu more than anywhere else – it’s why the club felt so slighted by Vinicius not winning the Ballon d’Or after his annus mirabilis.

Though Vinicius increased his personal tally to 41 goals and assists combined last season, those numbers came from 19 more appearances than in 2023/24 as Real Madrid failed to win a major trophy. His form appreciably nosedived after the Ballon d’Or snub, and a month into this season, with a World Cup on the horizon in the summer of 2026, hasn’t shown signs of climbing back up the mountain. Indeed, as rumours of an impasse between club and player over a new contract have swirled, the 25-year-old is beginning to fall out of favour for the first time since becoming a starting XI fixture.

A change in coach hasn’t helped. Xabi Alonso is a systems manager who demands his team press as a collective, whereas predecessor Ancelotti favoured a form of organised chaos that allowed Vinicius relative creative freedom. Alonso named Vinicius as a substitute in two of Los Blancos’ first five games of the season in all competition and though the No.7 impressed off the bench on both occasions – setting up a goal for Kylian Mbappe against Real Oviedo in La Liga and winning a penalty that sealed a 2-1 Champions League defeat of Marseille – it was obvious from the Brazilian’s body language that he wasn’t happy. He was the first to leave the pitch against Marseille, alone, while the rest of his team-mates celebrated with the fans.

Alonso praised Vinicius for showing “that he can have a big impact coming off the bench” against Oviedo, but that is unlikely to satisfy a winger viewed only 12 months previously as the world’s best player. “If there are private conversations, they should stay in [Real’s training ground] Valdebebas,” Alonso said after the Marseille game, when questioned about his relationship with the Brazilian. “There will be moments for everyone. No one is going to play every game. No one should feel offended for not playing a match.”

None of this, however, will affect Vinicius’ standing for Brazil in the build-up to the World Cup, not least because of who became A Selecao boss in May 2025. Ancelotti, the Madrid gaffer who appreciates Vinicius more than any other, will lead Brazil into the tournament and will build his team around his former charge, rested from the autumn qualifiers against Chile and Bolivia, as Brazil suffered a surprise home defeat by the latter without their attacking talisman. Yet to win a senior honour for his country – a 2021 Copa America runners-up medal the closest he’s come – Vinicius’ motivation will be huge, not only to definitively scratch that trophy itch but to improve a surprisingly poor record of just seven goals in 41 caps. Under Ancelotti, though, that will improve.

In his first interview as a Real Madrid player in 2018, the teenage winger was asked for his one wish. “To conquer the world,” came the immediate response. Eighteen months after he thought he’d already done so once, Vinicius Jose Paixao de Oliveira Junior has the chance to definitively climb that mountain, having only just turned 26. He may never get a better opportunity.

Cover photo: IMAGO / nogueirafoto