Uttiyo Sarkar

Failed Rainbow Flick and Awful Dive Defines Vinicius Junior’s UCL Misery Against AC Milan

AC Milan, Real Madrid, UEFA Champions League, Vinicius Jr

Vinicius Jr has had a few chaotic last few weeks.

It all started with Real Madrid’s 4-0 thrashing to Barcelona. After that, he lost the 2024 Ballon d’Or award in shocking fashion to Rodri.

That caused the entire Real Madrid contingent to boycott the award as they cried injustice.

Well, the Real Madrid star’s 2025 Ballon d’Or run has gotten off to a disastrous start.

He witnessed his side suffer an embarrassing 3-1 loss to AC Milan at the Santiago Bernabeu in their first match after the Ballon d’Or debacle.

Even though Vini scored a nice panenka penalty, his overall performance caused him embarrassment.

It almost felt at times that he was overdoing things in an effort to create special moments for his highlight reel from the game.

His desperation really started peaking in the first half when Los Blancos were looking for an answer to Milan’s surprising early lead.

In the 13th minute, he received the ball in a promising area in the AC Milan box. The Real Madrid winger pulled off a nice turn to get past his man, but then tried something ridiculous.

Rather than just squaring it to a teammate in the middle, he opted to do a rainbow flick inside the box, only to see it ridiculously botched.

The Brazilian winger couldn’t even get the ball in the air and was left embarrassed as the Milan players cleaned things up and cleared up any danger.

But that wasn’t the end of his ridiculous antics on the night.

Later in the second half, Vinicius tried his best to earn a penalty for his side with some hilariously bad playacting.

At one point, the ball was floated into the AC Milan box and goalkeeper Mike Maignan came up to collect it.

Vini didn’t even try contesting for it as he was in an offside position. But as Maignan threw the ball to a teammate, the winger went down writhing in pain.

He tried to trick the referee into believing that the goalkeeper had stamped him while throwing the ball away.

The replays, however, showed the truth.

What actually happened was Maignan’s shoes just slightly touched Vini as he distributed the ball. Vinicius probably didn’t even feel it that much, but still went down in pain trying to convince the officials to give a penalty.

The Brazilian winger was also accused of lacking sportsmanship during the second half.

As Alvaro Morata was down on the ground after being involved in a nasty duel, Vinicius felt that the was playacting.

He threw a bit of a temper tantrum at the referee even though it looked like the Milan forward might need some medical treatment.

In the end, Vinicius’ Panenka penalty was overshadowed by these embarrassing moments.

With the Ballon d’Or award criteria also taking ‘class and fairplay’ into consideration, the Real Madrid winger probably needs to improve his overall attitude to have a shot at winning the big prize next year.