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For many years, Kylian Mbappé was the player whom Real Madrid were – at least for some elements of the Spanish media – inevitably going to sign in whatever transfer window was coming up next.
The general mood was undeterred, no matter how little a rush Mbappé himself seemed to be in. That included him signing for Paris St-Germain from Monaco in 2017 for €180m (£153m), and a contract renewal at PSG in 2022 on the quite astonishing salary commitment of €4m a month. Then, in later years, it was often Mbappé and Erling Haaland for whom Real was billed as the ultimate destination, the pair of them filling front page after front page in the sports dailies. Eventually, when that 2022 extension expired two years later, Mbappé joined Real in the only circumstances that were ever viable: as a free agent.
Two years on, with 86 goals in 103 appearances over two seasons, many Real fans have a different view of the best footballer of his era, and the man whom they long believed was born to play for Real. They have decided they do not like him.
Only in football, and perhaps only at Real, a club of such caprice and brutal politics, could this happen, but it certainly gives an edge to Tuesday’s World Cup semi-final. Mbappé’s France play a Spain team which has only Marc Cucurella, who has not yet made his Real debut, representing his club side. The recent accusation in Spain, unsubstantiated in any meaningful way, has been that Mbappé has put France before his club.
There is no career that has produced the great club and country drama of Diego Maradona’s return to Serie A having dispatched Italy from the country’s own World Cup, at the semi-final stage in 1990. Whether there are parallels, only time will tell – although it is hard to imagine the Spanish nation uniting against Mbappé in the same way as Italy did in 1990 against Maradona.
As the joint leading goalscorer in the competition, Spanish football will do well to stop Mbappé, now with 20 career World Cup goals, and on the brink of his third straight final. As a child prodigy, he has delivered on all that promise. A World Cup winner in 2018, a hat-trick in the 2022 final, France’s all-time leading goalscorer, a daunting talent capable of the highest-grade skill at the most astonishing speed. Yet there are also these strange gaps in his career.
He has never won the Ballon d’Or. He has never won the Champions League, despite having played for the two dominant teams of the era. He left Paris St-Germain two years ago and since they have dominated Europe for the last two seasons. Real had won six in 11 editions of the Champions League before he arrived and have not passed the last eight in the two seasons Mbappé has been at the club.
There is much that can go wrong at Real. The club has been in turmoil for most of the previous season, its second without a major honour, culminating in president Florentino Pérez’s public meltdown and emergency election. The season started with Mbappé‘s ally in charge – Xabi Alonso – and it ended with Mbappé at odds with Alonso’s temporary successor, Alvaro Arbeloa.
By May, Mbappé would claim that he had been left out of the side to face Real Oviedo because Arbeloa had told him he was “fourth choice” striker behind Vinícius Junior, Franco Mastantuono and Gonzalo García. It came at the same time as Barcelona were sweeping towards their second Liga title in two years and Real were going through the usual self-loathing.
“I certainly didn’t say anything like that,” Arbeloa responded. Mbappé finished the season with 42 goals in 44 games, a better per-minute rate than the 44 he scored in 59 games in the previous season. These are very big returns, but it seems not to be enough. Real just are not winning anymore. Mbappé was booed in the Oviedo game. He is not the only Real superstar to get that treatment but the suggestion was very much that things are not working out the way a very demanding set of fans expected.
Kylian Mbappe after Real Madrid’s game in the Spanish Super Cup final
Mbappe’s cause has not been helped by managerial change and politcal turmoil at Real Madrid Credit: Altaf Qadri/AP
There were other slights perceived – real or otherwise. Mbappé was photographed on holiday on Sardinia with his girlfriend, the Spanish actor Ester Expósito, as Real prepared for a Clásico. He was injured and had permission to be away. French media claimed the club had missed a small ligament tear in his left knee. They had done, it was claimed, by mistakenly scanning his right knee. Mbappé would later issue a statement that appeared to deny this was the case.
Then there is the rivalry with Vinícius for the position both players feel best suited to their outsized talents. That being the left side of the attack. Vinícius, winner of two Champions League titles, is the dominant figure in the dressing room with a direct line to Pérez. One only had to see the mass Real boycott of the 2024 Ballon d’Or ceremony, when Rodri won instead of Vinícius, to see his power. The delay over his new contract is viewed as being connected to his misgivings about his and Mbappé’s relative standing.
This is likely why Pérez has decided that only a strong-man regime will do going forward and so into the fray walks José Mourinho. Returning to the club he can at least say that his Benfica team went some way to uniting Vinícius and Mbappé this season. Both of them were adamant that the Argentine Gianluca Prestianni had racially abused Vinícius in their Champions League play-off tie. Prestianni denied the allegation and Uefa instead found him guilty of homophobic abuse in what was, to say the least, an odd ruling.
Jose Mourinho with Vinicius Junior
Mourinho will managing Vinicius Junior and Mbappe next season Credit: Angel Martinez/Getty Images
If France do reach the final to face the defending champions Argentina there will be no greater grudge match in the tournament. It was Enzo Fernández who livestreamed he and his team-mates singing a deeply offensive song about the black players in the France team – and Mbappé in particular – after their Copa América win in 2024.
But that is all to come for Mbappé. First he has to beat a Spain team that cherishes possession but has very little of the flair of France. He will be up against Lamine Yamal, a superstar of almost equal billing at Barcelona who finished fourth among La Liga’s top goalscorers last season, nine behind Mbappé. At the World Cup that gap, relatively speaking, has been wider still.
Mbappé has been followed his whole career by suggestions that he is hard to manage in the conventional sense, although Didier Deschamps seems to be doing just fine in that regard. In the United States, Mbappé is playing like a man possessed. Determined to install himself at the top of the world for a second time – this time as France captain, leading goalscorer and chief talent among an array of French stars.
It is all he has ever known from the precocity of childhood, through the PSG years and now Real – the main man all the time. As for Real, one just knows that if Mbappé was not already a Real player, Real would be moving heaven and earth to sign him.
Post by News Desk
