WATCH: Real Madrid’s Eduardo Camavinga gets a guard of honor from French U21 teammates after winning the Champions League
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Winning the Champions League is no small task. But to do it at such a young age and that too doing it by playing an important part in your team is an even greater feat. Eduardo Camavinga did just that. He played the role of a deep-lying playmaker very effectively and contributed in his team winning the Champions League for a record-breaking 14th time.
As we can see in the video, his teammates have already lined up and are ready for the guard of honor. They start as soon as he walks in. Eduardo can do nothing but smile as he goes in between his teammates amidst a round of applause. Camavinga was as happy as anyone can get
How was Camavinga’s start this season under Carlo Ancelotti?
Camavinga is 19. And this is Real Madrid, a place that has chewed up a lot of talents, a special pressure placed on the new arrivals. When Ancelotti was told that Camavinga was coming to the club — the only signing along with Alaba — he was delighted. He had seen a lot of him, convinced that this kid was going to be special. He saw his first touch, the capacity to turn and face the play, a clean striker of the ball.
At Everton, he’d become increasingly convinced that Energia was ever more important in football — more so than it had been last time he was at the Bernabeu — and that trend would only continue. He saw that in Camavinga, a player destined to be the future of Madrid’s midfield.
When Ancelotti met Camavinga, he also saw the character, the ease with which he dealt with it all, which helped. But he also saw some elements still to be learned — how could there not be — and knew that there was time, a process to be followed not forced. Not by him, anyway: It is up to players to play so well that they change plans, obliging coaches to give them opportunities. And then to go and do it again, week after week.
When Eduardo Camavinga scored and assisted on his debut, everyone was delighted, but that brings its own demands, its own risks, its own pressure. In Ancelotti’s mind, players have to be protected, a balance found between encouragement and exposure.
There were moments when Eduardo Camavinga got cards that — cliché alert — could be attributed to the enthusiasm of youth, glimpses of things still had to learn in terms of positioning, knowing when to stay, where exactly to be.
His early removal from some games, and his subsequent absence from the team, wasn’t about pointing the finger; it was more about insulating him from others doing the same. It also wasn’t done without dialogue. Besides, no player is alone: There are 25 others in the squad and only 11 on the pitch at the start of each game.
Camavinga’s lack of continuity at that point was conditioned too by his return from the injury of Kroos, the form of Modric, and Valverde’s improvement after a difficult start. About, above all, doing what was right for the team. About doing the best by him and by all of them, trying to judge when his moment had arrived.
On Wednesday night, in the biggest game of the year, it did and Camavinga came on to carry them through. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, hopes resting on a 19-year-old kid.
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Aryan Sharma
(95 Articles Published)