My Favourite Samba Boy - Sports Talk Social TWC

I was on TikTok scrolling when I suddenly saw a video of Vini Jnr of Real Madrid trying to dribble past an opponent. The love, time and attention I gave to the video made me realize one thing, I love that guy. The love for Vini is a nurtured type of love. I say it’s nurtured because he was one of my most hated footballers over the last 3 years.

I can quite remember the hype Real Madrid's Twitter pages gave Vini jnr when we signed him. They praised him just like the way they are praising Endrick. With Vini, the hype was much more. The signing of Vini came along the line just after we lost Ronaldo to Juventus. The fans wanted someone to replace and instead of making a signing who will come in and fill the shoes of Ronaldo that looked too big for Hazard to wear, they went for Vini.

I mean at first glance you could see that Vini was an intelligent player. We all saw the videos of the guy dribbling players in Brazil for fun. He scored with so much ease but then for some reason after Madrid bought him, he lost his goal-scoring touch.

What went wrong? Things got worse by the day and it seemed every season he just got worse. Well, I was one of the people busily shouting Vini out, Vini out. But what the player did after realising all this cooled a lot of people down, including myself.

He knew he was bad, as you know the players use social media and whatever we throw at them they see. So after all these bad performances he decided to challenge himself. He decided to get a personal trainer, he decided to work harder. Now, with Vini, you could see the talent in him but then it was hiding somewhere after he came to Madrid.

So he had to work very hard to bring it out. The following season we saw a different Vinicius Jnr. For most people, he is known as Vini but when he came to Madrid he was known as Vinicius. Upon all his bad performances he requested the club changed his name to Vini Jnr the following season; the season he was about to have a breakthrough in his career.

I remember how Espn pundits dissed and dissected him for changing his name to Vini Jnr instead of concentrating on his bad career.

He changed his name out of confidence, he had full hope that things were about to change and it has indeed changed. Now Vini Jnr is considered one of the best players in the world. A lot of us cherish the passion he shows on the football pitch. I cherish the way he celebrates when he scored a goal. For a black player, he doesn’t get affected by racist abuse.

For me, there’s no way you can hate him. You can only look at his story and what you feel is love for the player. In his story are life lessons of never giving up when the going gets tough. At Real Madrid, there is a lot of pressure and as such if you are not mentally strong you will be a flop, Vini saw that early and worked on it. Even though he had talent he still had to work super hard.