A few days until the Ballon d’Or and there is already a designated winner. It was an unrepeatable opportunity for Lautaro too: the future is marked and he will have four masters already written

If we drop Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi from Olympus and exclude the players of Real Madrid and Barcelona from the list of the latest winners of the Ballon d’Or, we have to go back to seventeen years ago to find a winner who wasn’t the divine Argentine and the sublime Portuguese or one of the players of the two nemeses of Spain (and Catalonia). Ricardo Kakà with the white tuxedo at San Siro, the smile of a beardless young man that he still maintains now at the age of forty-two. Since then, since the year two thousand and eight, only Blancos, Blaugrana, Messi and Ronaldi.

Vinicius Junior will win
The election of the heir is in a few days and this time too it should not be far from those latitudes. The win was Vinícius José Paixão de Oliveira Júnior, aka Vinicius Junior from Sao Goncalo. Which is not the quintessence of Ronaldinhana’s Brazilian friendliness and flair, but we don’t have to see the jokester of the season as golden or organize a dinner with friends at the local club. Vinicius is the perfect mix between what football is today, the inspiration of an ancient instinct and the violins of an orchestra that continues to be practically perfect like the white one of Florentino Perez. He doesn’t thrill like Messi and he doesn’t dazzle like Ronaldo, he’s not even Mbappé and he doesn’t have the instincts of Haaland. If you think of Madrid you don’t think of him, but Real Madrid have been very Vinicius this last season, especially Vinicius. For better, for worse, in the shameful insults and offenses received, in the boastful scenes, in the goals, in the dribbling, in the trophies. On the scales, say the wise people who vote, they usually go: Champions League, and that went. European and then Copa America, and there it foundered. Championships, preferably Spanish and English, and there he went to the hole instead. It wasn’t the most successful, so the doubt remains. But he was in two of the season’s peaks, even winning the title of best of the last race for the Big Ears Cup, in a season of twenty-four goals in thirty-nine appearances with six stamps in Europe. But the doubt remains. Was it the best?

A season of transition
Let’s look each other in the eyes and then close them and then think about the future of football. Will Vinicius Junior with the rubronegro heart and the white football jersey be the best of the future? If we think about the football of tomorrow, will he be the master of futebol? Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham. Here they are the four musketeers of football to come, Vinicius will be one of them and certainly not the best ever, with one of the many Brazilians of the latest brood dreaming of contending for throne and sword. It has been a season, despite European Championships and Copa America, and Cups, and Championships, without peaks and masters and protagonists and Kings. Those who analyze the ball and look for a true master, tactical, brilliant, revolutionary, perhaps point to Rodri of Manchester City, of Spain and therefore of Pep Guardiola as the best of the last year and certainly not far from the objective. However, the lead actor, Vinicius, often takes the Oscar before the director.

And Lautaro Martinez?
Yes, and the Bull? After all, he won the Copa America as a leader and top scorer. But if you say Argentina, with your eyes closed, do you really think of him? No, there is always Benedetto dal Ballone, Lionel da Rosario, still taking laurels and attention. He won Serie A. He certainly didn’t win the Champions League. Enough? No and maybe it’s not even progressing. Maybe he’ll get to the podium because dragging the Albiceleste onto the South American throne is so wonderful to tell about to his grandchildren. But perhaps it was the right year, perfect, perhaps unrepeatable, to win the Ballon d’Or. Also because Mbappé, Bellingham, Haaland and Yamal are destined to take center stage, including that of the tightrope walker Vinicius. Who may not be nice, but who has a golden talent.