Week six had been marked by kids, born after 2000, but also by two veterans at the other end of the scale

“I like the goal, yeah,” Zinedine Zidane said, “but I like controls more, and his control was the hostia.” Which was one, pretty good way of putting it. The hostia is the body of Christ, the holy host, the consecrated bread, and bloody brilliant – a Spanish equivalent of the dog’s dingly-danglies – and Real Madrid’s manager was right. What Rodrygo had just done was special; where he had done it and when he had done it was, too. It was 10.30pm on Wednesday when Casemiro’s long, high diagonal reached him way over on the left. His first touch was impeccable, the ball tamed with the outside of his right foot, supposedly the wrong one, and coaxed into obediently joining him as he set off. Five seconds later, it was in the net.

He was 94 seconds into his Real Madrid career.

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As the ball dropped, TV commentator José Sanchís had cooed: “Oh, I love that control.” As it hit the back of the net, he had shouted: “I can’t believe it.” All around him, they couldn’t believe it, either. Some 57,270 people leapt. Lots laughed, which is what you’re supposed to do when something like that happens. Suddenly, there was this 18-year-old they’d never seen play kneeling then bowing before the Bernabéu, doffing an imaginary hat, and all was well with the world.

It had happened fast. Signed for €45m in 2018, Rodrygo didn’t actually join Madrid until this summer and hadn’t played a competitive game. At the weekend he didn’t even play for Castilla, the B team, for whom he had missed a penalty in his only appearance. Instead he travelled with the first team to Sevilla only to be left out of the squad entirely. “We know exactly what we’re doing with him,” Zidane insisted on Tuesday and the following night he stood on the touchline with his arm around the Brazilian’s shoulder, whispering in his ear. The clock showed 70.22 when Rodrygo ran on and, while it wasn’t actually the first ball he touched, 71.56 when he scored to make it 2-0 against Osasuna.

Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) 😎 Just on the pitch a few seconds and what a cool finish this is from 18-year-old Rodrygo to make it 2-0!



⚪ What a night for Real Madrid's young Brazilians! pic.twitter.com/yYDmN4QfeC

“I don’t remember a debut like this,” Sanchís had said. Alongside him, Jorge Valdano noted: “It might not exist.”

There have been pretty special starts for Madrid before: everyone remembers Robinho at Cádiz, David Beckham had scored 124 seconds into his first game at the Bernabéu and there may, genuinely, never have been a beginning quite like Jonathan Woodgate’s, which he neatly summed up in two words afterwards: “fuck” and “me”. But there haven’t been many like this. Only two foreigners have scored for Madrid younger than Rodrygo – Raphaël Varane and Vinicius – and no Madrid player has ever scored their first league goal faster. Only (original) Ronaldo, who’d been at Barcelona before, scored quicker on his Madrid debut: it took him 64 seconds.

“If I could control it well, I thought the rest would come off well,” Rodrygo said afterwards, still in his kit, wearing flip-flops and looking every bit as young as he is. “I don’t really have the words for this. I’m lucky.”

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And so it starts; the excitement, the expectation, the pressure. A few metres away, beneath the Bernabéu stands, Osasuna’s Fran Mérida, who joined Arsenal at 17, was asked if everyone risked running ahead of themselves. “Rodrygo’s the one running,” he said.

Week six had been marked by kids, born after 2000. Six hundred kilometres to the north-east they were still talking about Ansu Fati, again impressing for Barcelona’s after a late cameo in a 2-1 win over Villarreal; 350km away on the east coast, Kang-in Lee had just scored his first for Valencia in a wild 3-3 draw with Getafe. Aged 18 years and seven months, only two younger players have ever scored for the club. Over in Palma, meanwhile, João Félix scored the second in a 2-0 win over Mallorca. Atlético Madrid’s most expensive player ever, he’s still only 19.

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They are related, especially at Barcelona and Madrid. As the radios raved, some of the same things said about Fati come up again. Not least because, in that tiresome way that it’s always about them, the clubs that can’t live with each other and can’t live without each other either, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler going at it again. As if it’s not hard enough to live with your own club’s expectations; you have to match the expectations of your rivals too. Yet the concerns expressed parallels as well, an awareness of what could go wrong, of the warping power of expectation and pressure.

Back at the Bernabéu, Merida said: “I wouldn’t dare to tell anyone how to handle it; there are no lessons.” Yet there are many: countless examples and warnings, reasons why people try to rein in their excitement, even if they can’t help it. There’s always that slither of fear lurking in the excitement, a reluctance to emotionally invest, a concern at getting too excited and getting hurt, a resistance to playing a part in potential going unrealised and the dream dying. No one wants to be responsible somehow. Or, worse still, wrong.

There is a word used endlessly here that doesn’t translate well: ilusión. A false friend – and rarely has that description fitted better – it’s not illusion; it’s more like hope, excitement, enthusiasm, joy, a dream even. And yet it can become an illusion too, sometimes precisely because of the ilusión. Bojan Krkic broke Barcelona records and it broke him for a while. Gerard Deulofeu was the best player many of them had seen. In the end, though, neither was the new anything. Robinho started as a saviour, but ended up as a triathlete in a joke: corre, bicicleta y nada, it runs and although it doesn’t translate it’s enough to know that, if a little unfairly, he became someone to laugh at.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rodrygo runs at Osasuna. Photograph: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images

If Rodrygo (or the rest of us) needed any other warning, an indication of how hard it can be, there was also the man he replaced. The man? The boy. Light amid the gloom last season, the excitement building, a glorious future assumed and celebrated before it had actually happened, Vinicius’s performances had delighted but then dipped. He had suffered injury and hadn’t scored in 16 games. Chances slipped away, each more painful than the last. Then, at last, he bent a superb shot into the corner, taking a deflection en route. Madrid were 1-0 up and Vinicius slipped to his knees and sobbed, released at last.

“Since my injury, everything was hard,” Vinicius said. “I wasn’t the happy person I am. I have lifted that weight off now and I’m delighted to please the Bernabéu again.”

Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) ⚽ Vinícius Júnior curls one into the top corner to give Real Madrid the lead!



⭐ It's the first goal of the season for the young Brazilian star, and look at what it means to him! pic.twitter.com/7inBbhtzZr

“I’m happy for them; you could see the emotion when they scored, what it meant,” Zidane said. “We sometimes forget they’re both just 18.” Vinicius is actually 19 now, but the point remained. And for all the lessons, the warnings, there are examples that say the opposite. The ilusión is natural, it is right: it’s also the point. What is football, what is life, without it? Even the most rubbish teams live in hope. Iker Casillas was at school in a drawing class when they came for him; he won the World Cup. Valdano confided to Raúl that he was thinking of playing him but worried that he might freeze. Raúl, aged 17, replied: “If you want to win, put me in; if not, don’t.” He missed sitters that day, and became the best player Madrid ever brought through. And there was something about Messi.

Besides, it is too often forgotten that there is dignity, joy and triumph in careers, even when they aren’t what others demanded they become. There is life beyond those teams. There’s a second chance. And a third, a fourth, a fifth. There’s also time. Ask Bojan, finding satisfaction in his success, no one else’s; finding enjoyment too. Ask 37-year-old Jorge Molina; Jaime Mata, who never even made it to primera until he was 29 and is now a Spain international; or Aritz Aduriz, whose goalscoring figures improved after he turned 30. Or ask Martin Odegaard, who joined Madrid at 16, disappeared to most Spaniards, and has now reappeared aged 20, years still ahead of him and playing for Real Sociedad, with a genuine claim to be the best player in La Liga so far this season. Or Sergio Canales, able to be himself on his own terms, one of Spain’s outstanding players, an international many years and many injuries after that teenage move to the Bernabéu.

Best of all, ask the two men who really marked week six in La Liga. Because while there’s a thrill in seeing young players suddenly emerge, there’s something special, maybe even deeper, in seeing the men who resist, who belie their years at the other end of the scale. If kids are alright, the adults might be even better. Especially when they are like these two, made to make you smile.

Santi Cazorla is 34, has been operated on 10 times and was told he would be lucky to be able to walk around the garden with his son, but refused to give in and returned, still playing like no one else – included in last season’s best XI in La Liga, he may be on course for this season’s too. On Tuesday, he was handed a standing ovation by the Camp Nou, having outperformed everyone on the pitch and scored a brilliant goal. “That’s what I will take with me when I retire,” he said afterwards.

Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) In 2016, Santi Cazorla was told he may never walk again



2018: Re-signs with Villarreal 💛



Last night: Scores this screamer in the Nou Camp and went off to a standing ovation 🔥



Santi Cazorla, respect 👏👏



pic.twitter.com/TiThiLyfCV

And then there’s the man the Benito Villamarín rose to applaud a little over an hour earlier. Joaquín Sánchez left to an ovation after a ludicrous performance every bit as good as anyone of any age anywhere had produced for months. Everybody’s favourite cheeky scamp, he’s also a brilliant footballer still, maybe even better than he’s ever been. He provided three perfect assists as Betis beat Levante 3-1, and produced a piece of skill so brilliant, so absurd, so maddening, that all you could do was fall about the kind of trick that, as teammate Borja Iglesias put it, “really, really pisses you off” if you’re an opponent: a cola de vaca nutmeg, sweeping the ball through the legs of poor Toño that drew olés from everyone.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joaquín takes the crowd’s acclaim. Photograph: Soccrates Images/Getty Images

Which was why on the day Fati proudly showed off his new, Spanish ID card, Joaquín was asked to show his too – to prove that really was his date of birth. There’s no way he could be 38, but he is. On Tuesday, Joaquín played his 874th senior game; the day he played his first, Rodrygo hadn’t even been born.