MADRID.- Justice was not kind to Endrick. On the streets, at 9:00 in the morning, you could barely see white shirts arriving at the Santiago Bernabéu. The same place and time when a week earlier people had to walk with difficulty before Kylian Mbappé’s presentation.
The “competition” was not fair. That day, a Tuesday, July 16, was very different from this Saturday at the end of the month. Maybe people were not yet on vacation like now or it was much less hot. But above all, Endrick is not Mbappé.
And that’s fine. It’s what it should be. So, after just a couple of sentences in front of a packed Bernabéu and already wearing the white uniform, the striker burst into tears of emotion and with that, he managed to win over the fans. “I’m not going to lie to you. I didn’t expect this,” he said before the tears came over him.
Endrick doesn’t want to be Mbappé. He doesn’t want to be anyone else. He wants to be Endrick. He’s an emerging star, with a lot of expectations for the future and with the responsibility of breaking the “curse” of the strikers at Real Madrid.
Morata –in two stages-, Mayoral, Mariano, Jovic, Joselu –the latter with a much better feeling than the previous three-, have been burdened with the label of substitute without the right to change of status. Now, the young man who has just turned 18 will try to break that ceiling and, although it does not seem that he will upset Carlo Ancelotti’s initial plans, he will try to be a real and reliable alternative for the Italian.
Endrick arrives in Madrid with 30 goals since 2021 between the youth categories, Série A, Torneo Paulista, Copa do Brasil and Libertadores; all with the Palmeiras crest on his chest. In addition, the Brazilian has had a good opportunity to get to know part of the essence of his new club while sharing a dressing room with Vinicius Jr., Rodrygo and Militao in his country’s national team for the Copa América.
The Endrick era at Real Madrid has begun. A long road in which he will have a lot to prove, but he will not lack enthusiasm.
