A lot of folks have asked me to write about people that they believe may have biomechanically collapsed.
And honestly the list of potential options is massive because so many people have fallen for the orthodontics or veneers trap.
But this time felt a bit different as I had two different people ask to write about the same person in the span of a week.
And while I have a lot of footballers in my backlog, I haven’t really covered anyone in depth yet.
So I figured it would be high time to cover a footballer and one whose decline seems to be a bit of a trending story.
Vinícius Júnior was apparently one of the most electrifying players in football. I say ‘apparently’ because I honestly don’t watch enough football to know for sure lol.
Now he’s a 26-year-old who is “angry with himself” about his form, according to his own words after a Champions League game last month.
After looking into the story I think the cause is structural, and I think it started before he ever played for Real Madrid.
How good he was
At his peak Vini was close to unplayable.
He had explosive acceleration, close control at full sprint, and a fearlessness one-on-one that made defenders look slow. He scored the winner in the 2022 Champions League final, which you can see in the video above.
In 2023-24 he scored in the final again, posted 24 goals and 9 assists, and was named Champions League Player of the Year.
That kind of output comes from pretty solid biomechanics.
So where did things go downhill?
The decline
The slide is well documented.
After that stellar 2023-24 season, his numbers and influence dipped in 2024-25. His scoring rate fell from a goal every two games to one every four.
Early in 2025-26 he went 16 matches without a goal and was booed by Bernabéu fans.
For Brazil, he had scored only six goals in 39 games heading into the World Cup.
It hasn’t been a straight line. In 2026 he rebounded a bit under Arbeloa, and only Harry Kane scored more goals that year.
But this season has brought more of the same: one goal in his first 10 appearances, and a four-match ban after being sent off for pulling an opponent’s hair.
That’s the pattern I’d expect from a structural decline. It rarely falls off a cliff. Not unless you have your teeth filed down like I did back in 2014.
Rather after orthodontics it tends to look more like a heartbeat with ups & downs, but a baseline that keeps dropping. And the troughs come more often and last longer.
The braces
Look back at where this started. At his Flamengo debut in 2017, when he was 16, his braces were shining as he gave post-game interviews.
Treatment had already begun by then, and that’s the earliest sighting I could find.
The braces were still on when he arrived at Madrid in 2018, and the club’s first demand was that they come off. One report says he removed them before the treatment was finished.
So he spent at least 14 months with orthodontic appliances on, which would have changed his occlusion, flattened his curve of spee to some extent, and set the stage for years of collapse afterwards.
I explain the curve of spee in this article above. Basically in my view it is a reflection of the health of the skull.
Good curve = healthy skull. Flatter curve = more collapsed skull.
I’ve seen a pattern that the curve of spee pretty much always flattens in the years after orthodontic treatment.
Why it took years to show
The change in the skeleton after orthodontic work often takes a long time to play out. And in the initial years it can often seem like there is very little damage at all.
When he was 18 he arrived in Madrid with elite speed and a body that recovered quickly, and the early years of his career reflected that foundation.
But then by continuing to push his body by playing at a pro level he would be forcing his body to compensate.
The explosiveness and quickness will start to erode little by little. But in the initial years he can often cover this up by pushing himself harder and improving his trainable skills.
I generally like some of the things the guy in the above tiktok clip talks about. For example he mentions that AC Milan was warning footballers about changing their bite two decades ago.
Most likely because they were picking up on the same correlations I’ve been paying attention to.
Quite honestly… it’s pretty obvious once you know to look for the pattern.
The change in his skull
Compare photos of Vini in 2018 with photos from this year. To my eye, the shape of his head and face has changed.
The wide, full structure of his early years looks narrower, and the midface looks flatter and more drawn than previously. Or as I often like to say… “his skull deflated.”
A bit like a deflating balloon.
After his post-World Cup transformation, fans said he looks older, joking that Vini Jr. now looks like Vini Sr. elheraldo
That impression has been attributed to the chin work. I think the chin explains the outline of the lower face but not the broader change in how his skull sits. That change was already visible in photographs before July 2026.
The chin harmonization
In July 2026, after the World Cup, he turned up looking very different.
Reports say it was performed by dermatologist Dr. Alessandro Alarcão using facial fillers to reshape and define the chin.
It generally involves:
Injecting hyaluronic acid dermal filler into the chin.
Adding projection and changing the chin’s proportions.
Sculpting the lower facial contour.
Creating the appearance of a stronger jawline.
Neither Vinicius nor Real Madrid has confirmed the treatment.
Based on that understanding, it shouldn’t have a biomechanical impact. Fillers sit in the soft tissue and don’t change how the teeth meet, the vertical dimension, or the skull.
It also couldn’t have caused the decline, because the slump started well before July. A genioplasty that cut and moved the chin bone would be a different question, but the reports say fillers.
Closing thoughts
The coverage of Vini is mostly about his head: confidence, coaches, contract drama, and now a new face.
I think the useful question is what changed in his body. If I’m right, it began with orthodontic work in his teens that nobody connected to what came afterward.
Because they’re not yet accustomed to this post-ortho pattern that draws out over a decade or more the way I am.
And now that we’ve seen the evolution of Vini Jr. it begs the question of…. will young players that are currently wearing braces like Lamine Yamal follow a similar trajectory?
It’s kinda like playing Russian roulette with your career.
Except… your odds of making it through unscathed are far better in Russian roulette ;)
It's incredible to see the change in his face and very noticeable that his face has collapsed.
Personally, I think his teeth looked fine before.
you should do a write up on SAM SHEPARD who died from some terrible neurological disorder. he had his original teeth redone a decade or so before being diagnosed. so sad. terrific writer.