Vini Jr. Performance Drop: Ballon d’Or Impact

October 28, 2024. France Football awarded the Ballon d’Or to Rodri, with Vinícius Júnior coming in 2nd place, a ceremony that the entire Real Madrid entourage missed after allegedly knowing that their player would not be the winner. In the aftermath of the ceremony, a post by Vini on X went viral.

«I will do 10x if necessary. They are not prepared», wrote the Brazilian. In 2023/24, Vini scored 24 goals and nine assists in 39 games for Real Madrid, a season in which he won the Champions League and LaLiga. But he lost to the Spanish midfielder, winner of the Euro and Premier League.

However, Vinícius did not return to his form from that time. In fact, he even regressed — this is the conclusion of a survey carried out by the Spanish team at Cadena Cope, who compared several parameters of the forward’s game, between the 2023/24 season and the period since then.

Starting with the most important thing, the goals, Vinícius went from scoring, on average, once every two games to scoring once every four games, a 50% drop in performance. Another important factor: if at the time of 2nd place in the Ballon d’Or Vini’s goals directly resulted in 20 points gained for Real Madrid, since then Vini has directly gained only eight points for the team with his goals.

Afterwards, he attempts 25% less of his dribbles, continuing to hit half of those he makes, and he also dropped his cross attempts, which reduced by 20%. The only aspect in which he maintains his performance is in assists: one every three games.

Note that this most recent analysis coincides with Mbappé’s arrival at the Bernabéu. And since then, the Frenchman has been the team’s biggest source of goals. meringueswith 78 in total in the last season and a half.

However, the relevant markers indicate a 50% drop in performance by Vinícius. Numbers that the player, as Cadena Cope writes, will have to improve if he doesn’t want that night of October 28, 2024 to be the closest he will ever be to the Ballon d’Or.