Eduardo Camavinga: the supersub ready to shape Real Madrid’s future

Eduardo Camavinga is not accustomed to waiting. This is a man for whom everything has happened in a tremendous hurry. The youngest player in Rennes’ history, at 16 years and four months. The youngest to be named player of the month in Ligue 1. The youngest male France international for more than 100 years. For Camavinga, the trajectory of his career has been steep, swift and spectacular. Until, that is, he joined Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid, and was forced to bide his time.

Camavinga signed for Madrid on the final day of last summer’s transfer window, an all-action midfielder coveted across the continent. The fee, £26.6m with add-ons, looked a bargain for a teenage prodigy of rare versatility and poise. With Toni Kroos and Luka Modric well beyond 30 and Casemiro having just crossed that threshold, Camavinga was rapturously welcomed in the capital, and immediately tipped to take the Bernabéu by storm.

At which point, not much happened. It took Camavinga a month to get his first start. It was November before Ancelotti trusted him with a full 90 minutes in the league. Of his 39 games for Madrid this season, 23 have come as a substitute. He was on the bench for their last 10 Champions League games, including their entire run through the knockout stages. He will probably start on the bench again in Saturday’s final against Liverpool. And yet, with the possible exception of Karim Benzema, there is no Madrid player whose contribution will be more eagerly anticipated, no player of whom Liverpool will be more wary.

To discover why, you need to look beyond the simple numbers. Camavinga has been Madrid’s 15th-most used player in this season’s Champions League, contributing just a single assist. But their run to the final has been