Sometimes what is needed is something different.
There is a long history in football of counterintuitive thinking being successful, of the benefits of creative tension, of adding grit to the oyster to generate the pearl, but even so, the news that talks between Vinícius Júnior and Arsenal on personal terms are progressing comes as something of a shock. Mikel Arteta’s great followers of a blueprint adding a free spirit like the Brazilian? Really?
Vinícius returns to Real Madrid this week after the World Cup with movement on his future expected relatively soon. He has 12 months remaining on his contract and Madrid are keen either to tie him down to a new deal or to sell him while he will attract at least some kind of fee. As their squad rebuild goes on under José Mourinho, Madrid’s position is readily understandable. They have already signed Bernardo Silva, Denzel Dumfries, Marc Cucurella and Ibrahima Konaté this summer; removing Vinícius’s £420,000 a week (about $30m/year) basic wages significantly increases their financial headroom.
There’s been a sense since Kylian Mbappé joined Madrid two years ago that having him and Vinícius together left the squad unbalanced. Why would you need two rapid forwards who both prefer to cut in from the left, particularly when Rodrygo, who tended to be consigned to the right before tearing his ACL in March, would also prefer to play from the left? Yan Diomandé is likely to confirm his move to Real Madrid from RB Leipzig this week. Although the Ivorian has said he would rather play on the right, he too has spent much of his career on the left.
More broadly, Vinícius does not seem a natural Mourinho player. His pace and technical excellence are undoubted, but he has never been the most diligent at fulfilling his defensive responsibilities. Mourinho likes a forward who can improvise, and worked successfully with Cristiano Ronaldo at Madrid, but it’s difficult to see how he could indulge more than one such player at a time, and Mbappé will take precedence.
But those concerns about tracking, about the willingness to stick to a gameplan, about the capacity to retain possession are just as relevant to Arteta as they are to Mourinho – arguably more so, as Arteta believes far more in structured attacking planning than Mourinho. Is Vinícius, after years of freedom at Madrid, really going to accept those rigid structures?
It’s been fairly clear since the second half of last season that Arsenal would be looking to strengthen their left side. The sale of Leandro Trossard to Beşiktaş did not come as a huge surprise. The 31-year-old is reliable and played a valuable role last season, starting 21 of the 38 league games and coming off the bench on a further 10 occasions, but there is not much stardust about him. Gabriel Martinelli started 11 league games and came off the bench 19 times, and his pace can be a great asset, but it’s no longer clear that he is at his best on the left. The signing of Eberechi Eze last summer looked like an attempt to add creativity from that flank but his tendency to drift infield when Arteta needs his left-sided forward to stay wide meant that by the end of the season he tended to be used centrally behind a striker.
Vinícius would give Arsenal greater attacking thrust. At his best, under Carlo Ancelotti, he could transform a game in seconds. His pace, dribbling ability and finishing mean that no matter how stale a game seems to have gone, no matter how under pressure his team may be, they are never more than seven or eight seconds from a potential goal. It’s easy to see why Arsenal are tempted by him. He would immediately be their highest-profile player, adding a sense of direction to a summer that, at least from a recruitment point of view, has seemed to be drifting. Arsenal missed out on Morgan Rogers, who joined Chelsea, while Julián Álvarez, who would seem a much more natural fit on the Arsenal left, appears more likely to go to Barcelona, if sufficient financial levers can be pulled.
But the fact Vinícius is not a natural fit may be part of the attraction. It was, after all, the season after signing Erling Haaland, far from a typical Pep Guardiola player, that Manchester City won the treble. A player who does not quite fit, who kicks against the general philosophy, can make a process team less predictable. The friction can produce valuable sparks.
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Haaland, it’s fair to say, is a different personality from Vinícius and, as a center-forward, there was never a worry he was going to leave his full-back exposed. Vinícius is a bigger risk. He would certainly be an expensive one, not just in terms of his own salary but the inflationary pressure that could have on wages at the club more generally.
But he would also add a dash Arsenal have lacked that would make the accusation of being dead-ball plodders hard to sustain. And with Trossard gone, there is a left-sided hole that needs filling.