He scored. He stopped a certain goal. He tackled with precision and stealth. And with his height, his physicality and his ability to read the plays, he reminded the 85,000 fans inside the Santiago Bernabéu of Real Madrid’s last great central defender, Fernando Hierro.
“My teammates congratulated me in the dressing room,” Varane said after the first leg of the King’s Cup semifinal on Wednesday ended at 1-1. “And I have to keep giving my best.”
His best is surely yet to come, for this 19-year-old-Frenchman is on a learning curve at this rarified level of soccer. Yet to bestride the field on which Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were present; to score while they did not; and to look so accomplished in such company, this surely heralds an exciting career in the making.
More than that, Varane was calmness personified in a makeshift Madrid defense. Its goalie and captain, Iker Casillas, is out for up to three months with a broken left hand. Its vice captain and regular center back, Sergio Ramos, was suspended, as he so often is, because his play lacks the inner calm displayed by the rookie Varane.
Add two more bans (for left back Fábio Coentrão and winger Ángel di María) to the injuries to the defenders Pepe and Marcelo, and it becomes easy to understand why Real would blood a teenager in a match of this intensity — a match that has been contested for more than a century and stands at 88 victories for Madrid, 87 for Barça and 48 draws.
Into this cauldron stepped a young man who, when he was 18 and barely out of the Lens youth academy, had his pick of joining either Real Madrid or Manchester United. He showed, even then, a level head on his shoulders, because he reasoned that United had just signed a young defender (Phil Jones), while Real promised him a swifter passage to first-team soccer.
His parents had roots in Martinique, the Caribbean island that Thierry Henry’s family also hailed from. Varane grew tall, to 1.88 meters, or 6-feet-2, yet is lithe and quick. His countryman, Zinédine Zidane, had already likened him to France’s most thoughtful defender, Laurent Blanc.
Zidane would not make such comparison lightly. He would, in his capacity as an adviser to Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, be influential in the youth coming to the Bernabeu.
But from there, a boy has to make it on his own. Zidane’s own son, Enzo, was also playing for Real Madrid on Wednesday, but for the Under-18 team in Qatar. Enzo Zidane was red-carded for a nasty two-footed tackle into the groin of an opponent from Aspire International.
In the senior game — especially one as on edge as Real Madrid vs. Barcelona invariably is — a coach has to think first and foremost of whether the temperament of his players equips them for the encounter.
Standing among the modern greats, Varane impressed again and again. He forged an instantaneous understanding with Diego López, the goalkeeper that Madrid sold years ago but has now paid €3.5 million, or about $4.75 million, to bring back from Sevilla to fill in for the injured Casillas.
López was as calm and as agile as Madridistas remember him to be. Varane, though, was a revelation as he stepped in, time and time again, to make interceptions and clean up the errors from his far more experienced, but slowing, co-defender, Ricardo Carvalho.
There was the goal-line save from Varane on 24 minutes when he sensed that his goalie was exposed by a mistimed Carvalho back pass, so he then dropped back to intercept the resulting shot from Xavi.
There was a quite outstanding, thrillingly clean and timely tackle to win the ball just as Cesc Fàbregas seemed certain to score after 53 minutes.
And, because Fàbregas had by then already scored Barcelona’s goal after a pass by Messi, there had to be someone in the Real Madrid white who could rescue the situation.
Chances had come and gone and been squandered by Barça players, in particular by Jordi Alba and Pedro. Xavi had rattled the crossbar with a perspicacious free kick. And Messi was being closed down and smothered by up to four defenders; wherever he moved, he was he tripped and tapped on his ankles.
Ronaldo, wearing the Madrid captain’s armband, had stretched Barcelona’s keeper, José Pinto, to his limits with a free kick, but Ronaldo also, uncharacteristically, mistimed what for him was a simple header.
So, with the big reputations stymied, where and from whom might a face-saving goal come from for the home side?
Varane made the night his own when, with eight minutes to go, he strode upfield for a corner kick and, after a pinpoint cross by Mesut Ozil, rose high and scored with a fearsome downward header.
That moment — along with Varane’s unflustered demeanor as his grateful teammates ran to him — was again reminiscent of Hierro, the big defender who rescued Madrid with aerial goals so often that it became almost a trademark of how the team from the capital could stay in a contest when all else failed.
This semifinal, of course, is not decided. There will come the second leg in Catalonia on Feb. 27, and by then, with Barça so far ahead in the La Liga title race, both teams will be focusing on the Champions League.
But you sense that José Mourinho, the Madrid coach who didn’t wish to speak to the news media on Wednesday, has just been presented with a selection choice that could shape the final months of this season.
His experienced defenders will be back. But does he go with such volatile men who regularly risk yellow and red cards, or trust the youth who sailed through his first Clásico without putting a foot out of place?
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