At Real Madrid, concern and annoyance are growing around the aggressiveness that Vinicius usually suffers, especially in this season in which his goalscoring awakening (he has already scored 17 goals) marks him out as one of the leader’s main attacking assets. Rival defenses act accordingly, as Maffeo did during Mallorca-Real Madrid. The vermilion defender made a very tough tackle on the Brazilian, deserving of a straight red in the opinion of Iturralde González, arbitration specialist for AS and Cadena SER. However, Sánchez Martínez did not even consider it a foul and scored a throw-in in the face of complaints from Vinicius, who received a yellow card for protesting and for confronting a rival. The referee even threatened him: “I expel you…”.
Ancelotti did not want to influence that action too much after the game: “This is football, sometimes it can happen. I don’t think Maffeo meant any harm. It was a tough game, with contacts, I think the referee was right in the end“The Italian is more focused lately on correcting certain attitudes of Vinicius and preventing him from falling into provocations. But Emilio Butragueño, director of Institutional Relations of the club, did complain: “There are plays that deserve reflection. They can involve an injury. The referee was close and they are dangerous actions. If he doesn’t see it, the VAR has to intervene.”
Vinicius, tickets and racism
Vinicius has been living with situations like this since he arrived. Playing with Castilla, an Atleti B defender even bit his head. And in the recent visit to Vila-real, he received two unsanctioned elbows, by Albiol and Parejo, two ex-Madridistas. In the field it is difficult for him to contain himself, outside of it he takes it with philosophy: he uploaded a publication to his social networks with two images: one in which he received the aforementioned brutal entry from Maffeo and another in which he left sitting on the side with a cut dry.
The entrance of Maffeo to Vinicius.
JAVIER GANDUL
What also worries within Real Madrid are the constant shouting and racist chants that Vinicius has to put up with this season. He already happened to him in the Barcelona Classic. In Mallorca, they yelled at him “go pick up bananas” and sounds typical of a monkey (“U, u, u…”). Mallorca himself condemned the event “roundly and forcefully”.