The Kylian Mbappe debate at Real Madrid: Has the superstar forward delivered?
Mbappe has not played for Madrid since April 24, when he suffered a hamstring problem (Fran Santiago/Getty Images)
As Real Madrid’s players walk through the tunnel leading out onto the Bernabeu pitch, they pass a quote from club legend Alfredo Di Stefano printed on its walls.
“No player is as good as all of you together.”
Di Stefano was one of the greatest stars in Madrid’s history. As a player, he was the fulcrum behind their five consecutive European Cups between 1956-1960. Later he had two spells as manager (1982-84, 1990-91) and was made honorary president in 2000. He died aged 88 in 2014.
The quote has taken on renewed meaning. Fan criticism of the team’s individual stars has become a hot topic as the Spanish club drift towards the end of a second consecutive season without a major trophy.
Vinicius Junior, Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe have all been targeted with jeers and whistles from the stands this term — as well as president Florentino Perez, perhaps the man most associated with Madrid’s modern galactico philosophy.
Further to this, toxicity behind the scenes was laid bare by last week’s training-ground fight between Aurelien Tchouameni and Federico Valverde.
But recently, debate over Madrid’s footballing problems has amplified around Mbappe especially, the mercurial France striker who Perez and the club courted for years before finally landing him on a free transfer (and a substantial signing fee) in June 2024.
Back then, it looked like Madrid had assembled the squad they needed to expand on domestic and European dominance, having just won La Liga and the Champions League, with Bellingham and Vinicius Jr shining. Now, there are problems everywhere you look.
If we focus on attacking statistics, there is little to reproach Mbappe for.
He has been the team’s top scorer with 77 goals across La Liga and the Champions League since his arrival, winning the Golden Boot in the 2024–25 season. When Madrid were beaten in the Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern Munich last month, he was one of the few players who performed at the expected level, with two goals across the two legs. He is still almost certain to finish as the tournament’s top scorer this term with 15 in total — close to Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 17 in the 2013–14 season.
As we can see from the tilemap below, Mbappe has scored almost double the number of goals of any other Madrid team-mate since his signing, and he hoovers up most of the team’s attacking opportunities. He has overperformed on expectations, too, scoring seven more than the quality of his chances suggest he should.
Seemingly, that is not enough for Madrid fans.
In the team’s following home match after dropping out of the Champions League, Mbappe was one of the players booed and singled out by supporters. Since then, he has faced criticism over several off-field issues.
Last week, The Athletic reported on a training-ground row between Mbappe and a member of Madrid’s coaching team in the build-up to a game at Real Betis on April 24, an incident sources said had contributed to a growing bad atmosphere at the club.
Internal tensions also rose over his decision to take a trip to Italy with his partner while he recovered from injury. Responding to the situation, his representatives released a statement saying: “A portion of the criticism is based on an over-interpretation of elements related to a recovery period strictly supervised by the club, and does not reflect the reality of Kylian’s commitment and daily work for the team.”
But as a Madrid reporter who has covered these past two seasons closely, I find myself asking something many have wondered lately: has this journey been worth it?
The case against Mbappe: Has he done enough?
When Mbappe’s signing from Paris Saint-Germain was set to become official two years ago, a member of Carlo Ancelotti’s staff pointed The Athletic to the Frenchman’s off-the-ball statistics, and commented on how remarkable his lack of defensive effort was.
At the time, Ancelotti’s staff were already concerned about maintaining the team’s balance after Mbappe’s arrival. It might have seemed overly pessimistic then, when Madrid had just won a record-extending 15th Champions League with a hugely talented squad, but that analysis now seems prescient.
Across his La Liga and Champions League matches, Mbappe is the Madrid player with the fewest tackles, interceptions and ball recoveries per 90. More damning is the lack of ‘true’ tackle attempts — a combination of tackles won, lost, and fouls committed that gives an indication of how often a player looks to stick a foot in. In La Liga, he ranks dead last — 461 out of 461 — for outfield players with the fewest of such attempts, around 0.6 per game.
With very few exceptions — including certain Clasicos and the odd Champions League tie — Mbappe has been the Madrid player to make the least effort in defence. That is not necessarily a problem for a star forward, but the issues are clear when Mbappe is played alongside other attacking galacticos such as Vinicius Jr, Bellingham and Rodrygo.
That is without mentioning another dilemma: how Mbappe connects with Vinicius Jr on the left. They have not gelled on the pitch often, while their positions have regularly appeared to overlap.
As we can see from the touchmap below, both drift over to the left flank in build-up, and while there have been some exciting moments of connection between the two, the link has not been as consistently seamless as that between fellow Brazilians Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo in years gone by.
Their apparent incompatibility has not only raised doubts about squad planning — who thought having two dominant, left-sided attackers was a long-term solution? — but also whether having a player who scores so many goals is worthwhile when they have such an impact on the rest of the team’s play.
Madrid scored 78 goals in La Liga last season and have netted 70 in the current campaign with three matches remaining, while in the 2023–24 season they scored 87 when, paradoxically, the team did not have a clear attacking reference point (Bellingham acted as a false nine while Joselu was a target man off the bench) and Mbappe had yet to arrive.
It could be a problem that extends into the future — how might Mbappe’s positional needs affect other high-potential players who are brought into the side, for instance?
That is without addressing the most pressing, off-pitch issue: dressing-room harmony. As a leader, Mbappe is expected to show up in the most difficult moments, but this has not always been the case.
His signing followed several transfer windows in which Madrid had tried to sign the player without success. At his presentation in July 2024, Perez said Mbappe had made “a great effort” to join — but the way he said ‘no’ to Madrid in 2022 left its mark on fans. It is hard to see what effort he has made, given he is the highest-paid player in the squad and is yet to win the Champions League.
In Mbappe’s defence: The Cristiano Ronaldo factor
Mbappe remains one of the world’s best players. Even with recent doubts surrounding him, he could well end up being one of the standout performers with France at this summer’s World Cup.
He seems to produce his best when he is a side’s clear protagonist, as with the national team. He won the World Cup as a 19-year-old in 2018 and became the only player other than England’s Geoff Hurst to score a hat-trick in the final, doing that in 2022 — though he still ended up on the losing side against Lionel Messi’s Argentina.
When former Madrid coach Xabi Alonso gave him a more prominent role ahead of Vinicius Jr in the first half of this season, Mbappe appeared more relaxed and consistently shone.
There are probably things he can improve on — especially defensively — but there is a sense that, if trusted, he could really impress given his talent, his peak age (27 years old) and the three years he has left on his contract.
In a team that has lost experienced voices such as Karim Benzema, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric in recent years, it is perhaps even more important to continue to back Mbappe — who remains a leader by dint of his ability.
Even though there have been some media missteps, he has shown himself to be a skilled communicator in interviews and stadium mixed zones. After Vincius Jr alleged racist abuse from Benfica’s Argentine winger Gianluca Prestianni in their Champions League play-off first leg in February, Mbappe presented an eloquent defence of his team-mate (Prestianni denied any racism and received a six-game ban from UEFA for homophobic, rather than racist, conduct).
It is also worth remembering how Madrid, Perez and chief executive Jose Angel Sanchez have previously dealt with these kinds of situations — and specifically what happened with Mbappe’s childhood idol, Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the Portugal star’s first two seasons with Madrid, the side only won a Copa del Rey. It took five years for him to lift his first Champions League title with the club in 2014, against Atletico Madrid in Lisbon, and there were cryptic moments along the way. In September 2012, for instance, Ronaldo did not celebrate either of his two goals in a win against Granada and said afterwards: “I’m sad and the people at the club know it.”
If what happened next proved anything — Ronaldo won four Champions League titles and left as their all-time top scorer in 2018 — it is that the wait can be worth it for superstar forwards like him.
Additional reporting: Thom Harris
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