It is fair to say that Carlos Vinicius was a bit of an unknown quantity for the majority of Spurs fans until this summer when he joined the North London club.
The striker had a brilliant first season for Benfica last campaign but was hardly a household name in Europe before that.
The Athletic did an investigative piece last week looking into how the striker has risen from obscurity over the last few years, detailing the Brazilian’s transformation from a central defender to a centre-forward.
Portuguese football expert, Tiago Peres Costa, who works for Sport TV, has now given Tottenham fans an idea of what they can expect from the striker and he is fairly optimistic that the 25-year-old will be a success at the club.
Speaking about the striker’s nickname in Portugal, he told the club’s official website: “He has a nickname here in Portugal – ‘Vinigol’. We also knew him as Vinicius – we didn’t call him Carlos. With Vinicius, we called him ‘Vinigol’ because he scored lots of goals in the teams that he played for in Portugal, so it will be good for Tottenham supporters to start calling him ‘Vinigol’ – I think he would like it!”
Costa revealed that Vinicius is very mobile despite his imposing frame and is someone who specialises in bringing others into play.
He said: “He’s a striker, a number nine, a forward with mobility and he has a great left foot. One of the things he can improve on is his work with the right foot but last year, he developed his heading game – he scored many goals with his head. When he arrived in Portugal, he wasn’t so good with his head but now he has developed that part of his game very well.
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“He’s only 25 years old. He’s very tall, he’s strong against defenders, he can take and keep the ball very well and combine with the players around him to get them into the area. He’s very good with his left foot – he strikes the ball very well with it.”
The journalist backed Vinicius to score plenty of goals at Tottenham and insisted that he can be used up top on his own and also in tandem with Harry Kane.
Costa added: “He’s a guy with good confidence. Now he has a Portuguese coach who can talk to him in his language in Jose Mourinho and his technical staff, I think he can improve, especially with the pace and intensity of the Premier League. He is a coach’s player and now he is an adult. When Harry Kane needs to rest, Vinicius can step up and perform the role very well. Whether that be in the Europa League or even a hard game in the Premier League… say if Tottenham are drawing 0-0 with 20 minutes to go, he can play perfectly alongside Kane and it will be a powerful strike force.
“A point in favour for him is he will not be the main striker for Spurs. He will work alongside one of the best forwards in the world in the shape of Harry Kane so we can say that he can only improve. With the players behind him providing him with assists, I think it will be easy for him to score goals for Tottenham. One handicap is that he doesn’t speak English very well, so he will need to improve that but the language of the field, of scoring goals, he knows that very well. I think over the next few seasons, if he continues to improve, he could be called into Brazil’s national team.”
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Only time will tell what kind of impact Vinicius will make at Spurs. We have seen with strikers like Islam Slimani in the past that being prolific in Portugal does not necessarily translate to the Premier League. However, Vinicius certainly seems to have all the attributes to fit nicely into English football.
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