Arsenal will be pushing against an open door if they follow through on initial interest and make a big money offer for Vinicius this summer.
The Brazilian’s contract extension talks at Real Madrid have not advanced in the past 12 months and he is now entering his last season with the Spanish club not wanting to contemplate his departure for nothing next summer.
Renewing him will be expensive because of demands to be paid close to top-earner Kylian Mbappe as well as trying to negotiate a sizeable loyalty bonus.
Vinicius’ new coach Jose Mourinho is unlikely to stand in the way of any deal.
He rates the 26-year-old hugely, and their falling-out last season over racist abuse aimed at the player in Real Madrid Champions League play-off against Benfica is not being seen as a barrier to their forming a good working relationship.
But Mourinho is also aware the player’s departure would relieve him of a tactical conundrum that neither Carlo Ancelotti nor Xabi Alonso before him could properly solve.
Arsenal are exploring an ambitious summer swoop for Real Madrid superstar Vinicius Junior
The Brazilian would be a huge addition to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal as they bid to defend their title
Madrid’s last two campaigns have been stifled by the problem of fitting Vinicius and Mbappe into the same attack-heavy team without diminishing their individual powers. Both want to occupy the same parts of the pitch and enjoy limited defensive responsibilities.
Vinicius and Mbappe have also not gelled off the pitch. Last season Mbappe blamed the Brazilian for helping to get Xabi Alonso the sack.
He wanted the now-Chelsea manager to stay at the club but a very public tantrum from Vinicius early in the season when he was substituted by Alonso in the first league meeting with Barcelona undermined the coach’s authority.
It was a blow from which Alonso never really recovered and he was sacked in January despite Mbappe jetting out to Saudi Arabia, while not fully fit, to play in the Spanish Super Cup and to try to help Alonso save his job by winning the trophy.
The relationship between Mbappe and Vinicius – the two biggest personalities in the Real Madrid dressing room – only adds to the problems thrown up by their on-field incompatibility.
When Mourinho arrived at Real Madrid for his first stint in charge of the club in 2010 he also thinned-out a difficult dressing room with club legends Raul and Guti moving on, albeit towards the end of their careers.
Vinicius’ departure would upset some factions of Real Madrid’s support wary of his importance in the Champions League conquests of 2022 and 2024 when he scored in both finals.
But the player was also whistled at various points of last season, first for the petulance shown when Alonso substituted him in that ‘el clasico’, and then subsequently as part of a general disappointment at the way Madrid’s season disintegrated.
Some fans might fear what he will do at the Emirates arriving in London in his prime aged 26. But the majority will back the club’s call to cash-in and celebrate the new arrivals he paves the way for.
It’s all change at the Bernabeu after Jose Mourinho took over as Real Madrid’s new manager
Mourinho managed Benfica when Vinicius was allegedly racially abused by one of his players
If 19-year-old Ivory Coast winger Yan Diomande is the first of those then Madrid will be welcoming a player happy to play on the right of the attack where he played last season for RB Leipzig. It will help Mourinho’s balancing act.
A shadow was cast over Mourinho’s relationship with Vinicius last season when he failed to support the Brazilian winger after he accused Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni of racially abusing him.
After scoring for Madrid in the first leg of a Champions League play-off against Benfica in February Vinicius celebrated in front of home supporters at the Estadio da Luz.
He was then racially abused by Prestianni who covered his mouth and called him a monkey multiple times. Mbappe was one of several Real Madrid players who backed Vinicius’ claims saying he had heard the insult repeated several times.
Post-game Mourinho said he couldn’t decide between the opposing accounts of what happened and he criticized the way Vinicius had celebrated his goal prior to the abuse.
‘It happens in so many stadiums’, Mourinho said of his goal celebration. ‘I told him on the pitch: “You score an out-of-this world goal, why do you celebrate like that? Why don’t you celebrate like Di Stefano, Pele, Eusebio”, it’s always the same.’
The implication, intended or otherwise, that Vinicius had in some way brought the abuse on himself by celebrating in a provocative way – and coming from the master of provocative celebration himself – did not go down well in the Vinicius camp.
There were no subsequent olive branches and Vinicius’ arrival back at Real Madrid training, scheduled for tomorrow, would be their first public coming together since last season’s play-offs.
Any lingering bad feeling on the part of Vinicius will not be enough to sour their relationship going forward providing the 26-year-old is front of centre of Mourinho’s plans but that is something that can’t be guaranteed for as long as Mbappe remains Real Madrid’s most important player.
If Arsenal do follow through on their interest, the final word will be had by Florentino Perez, Real Madrid’s recently re-elected president. Perez didn’t blink when Juventus made a 105 million euros offer for Cristiano Ronaldo back in 2018.
He has been forced to share the spotlight at Madrid with Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham
Ronaldo was 33 when he was sold by Madrid, not Vinicius’ age of 26, but there is a sense that Madrid is a club with one too many maverick megastars needing the team to be built around them.
The main reason why Vinicius’ contract talks with Real Madrid stalled last season are the demands for him to be paid close to on a par with Mbappe.
Meeting those demands would mean offering a new deal worth 30m euros a season plus a loyalty bonus of 15m. And the alternative, if the saga drags on, would be to lose the player for free in 2027.
Vinicius moving to London is a third way Madrid will be very open to exploring if Arsenal decide to go all-in for a player who would send their title defence into overdrive and bring one of the best players in the world to the Premier League.
