Yan Diomande set up the opener for Arda Guler in the 30th minute, ran at Sevilla for 90 minutes and scored himself in the 82nd on Saturday 18 October, as Real Madrid beat the visitors 4-1 with Jose Mourinho’s first-choice left winger nowhere near the matchday squad.
Vinicius Junior will not be anywhere near Camp Nou either. The Brazilian was shown a straight red card for pulling Nathan Saliba’s hair during Madrid’s 1-0 win at Villarreal on 10 October, then protested the decision loudly enough to earn a second two-match ban on top of the two for the foul.
The RFEF Appeals Committee upheld the four-game total on Friday 16 October, ruling that “the images allow us to appreciate the hair pull, and the alternative explanations offered by the club do not undermine the certainty of the referee’s account.” Real Madrid plan to take the case to Spain’s Administrative Sports Tribunal, but with the Clasico four days away the window has effectively closed.
Vinicius will also miss the Racing Santander trip on 1 November and the Valencia match on 7 November.
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A €125m teenager on the left
Diomande, a 19-year-old from Abidjan, joined Madrid from RB Leipzig in August for €125m guaranteed and up to €15m in bonuses, a club-record fee that beat Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool to the Ivory Coast international’s signature. He had scored 12 goals and laid on eight assists in his only Bundesliga season as the competition’s young player of the year.
Four games into his life as a Real Madrid player, he has three goals and three assists. The right-footed volley he struck against his former club in the 87th minute of a 4-1 Champions League win over Leipzig made him the first former Leipzig player to score against them in the competition.
“I’m going to try it, one touch and boom. It’s not easy, of course it isn’t,” Diomande told beIN Sports of the finish.
“It sounds easy to say, but it’s not easy to do. But Brahim passed me the ball, and I said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’”
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The number Mourinho did not plan for
Since the start of last season, Vinicius has missed three LaLiga matches: at Valencia in February, at home to Athletic Club in May, and the Sevilla game last Saturday. Madrid have won all three, scoring 10 and conceding three. Across the last three seasons the forward has sat out 10 LaLiga games in all, with the club winning nine and losing only one according to StatMuse data.
That is a short sample, and nobody inside Valdebebas is arguing that Vinicius has become a problem. But Mourinho is going to Camp Nou six points behind Barcelona, with his first-choice left winger watching from Madrid and his club-record teenager on the kind of run that forces every substitution to be reconsidered when the Brazilian is eligible again against Celta Vigo.
Kick-off at Spotify Camp Nou is at 9pm local time on Sunday 25 October. It will be Jose Mourinho’s first Clasico since his first spell as Madrid coach ended in 2013, and the first in which Hansi Flick’s Barcelona defend a run of six wins in their last seven competitive meetings with the opponent.
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