In Vinícius’s case, the change of venue alone has been remarkable.

Only a few years ago, Vinícius, a skillful and speedy wing, was living in a cramped room with more than a half-dozen family members in a Rio de Janeiro municipality notorious for violent crime and crippling poverty. Then, in May 2017, Real Madrid agreed to pay the Rio de Janeiro club Flamengo 45 million euros (just over $50 million) for the rights to the teenage forward. In an instant, before he had kicked a ball as a professional, Vinícius became the most expensive teenage export in Brazilian soccer history.

The record-breaking fee made Vinícius, then only 16, an instant millionaire. But it also kick-started the effort to make his journey from Rio to Europe as seamless as possible. That is why Menegate and Menezes are here, along with his aunt and nearly a dozen other family members, all of them living inside the two-story villa behind the tall gates, the ferns and the evergreens of La Moraleja, an enclave for Madrid’s rich and powerful.

It is the dream of every young Brazilian boy who plays soccer to land with a club like Real Madrid, a team of superstars that has won more international titles than any other club. Vinícius’s journey, though, represents something far different than the usual favela-to-riches story: It also captures the fevered, high-risk game Real Madrid plays to try to maintain its excellence, the ease with which top clubs can bid up the value (and the expectations) for an unproven player, and one family’s efforts to try to maintain just the slightest bit of normalcy amid that storm.