Frenchman’s journey to Madrid was a story foretold, seemingly forever, but he arrives a superstar, not a saviour.
Kylian Mbappé was 13 the first time he trained with Real Madrid and 25 the second. Now, at last, he can play for them. And while this was a chronicle foretold and retold, over and over again for so long, much as he said “I knew this was my destiny” and everyone else knew it was, however inevitable it had always seemed, tedious at times too, it still felt a bit weird when he turned up at Valdebebas again last week. He was actually here. On Thursday, La Liga 2024-25 begins; one way or the other, it will always be his, even if it turns out not to be.
This has taken long enough. “I was close two years ago, three years ago,” Mbappé said. And the rest. Invited to train with Madrid in 2012, a kid but not just a kid, he had been driven by Zinedine Zidane to the club’s training pitches, asking if he should take his shoes off in the car. He met Cristiano Ronaldo, whose posters covered his bedroom wall, and took a picture of his own. You’ll have seen the images of him gazing up at them many times. While in Paris he even published a book called My Name is Kylian, which told the story of a boy visited by Ronaldo and Zidane in dreams coloured white. Subtle, it was not.
It’s eight years since his dad told everyone he was a Madrid fan who admired Cristiano Ronaldo, seven since Madrid tried to sign him. “Seven years is a long time,” he said, and it has felt like it too; in truth it has often felt like a waste. He is 25 now. It’s been “done” many times but never got done; now it has been, better late than never. Or maybe just better late, full stop, the wait making it all mean more, fit better?
At his unveiling, Mbappé walked out and looked up at the Santiago Bernabéu with a “wow”, then signed off with a “1, 2, 3, Hala Madrid” – a nod to Ronaldo, who had done the same, in 2009. Gareth Bale cost more than Ronaldo had, so in fact did Eden Hazard, but no signing was as big as that, until this. A footballer long since called to lead a new era, post-Messi and Ronaldo: almost 80,000 people were there to see it. He had struggled to sleep the night before, he said.
That’s the story part, and at least to start with he will be the story, although the time since his presentation has shown that he will not be the only one. Now to the actual sport, and there are some questions. Above all about where he fits, how to get the pieces to go together, which may even distract from a deeper doubt: who does what Toni Kroos, a truly irreplaceable player, did?
Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo occupy similar spaces, or like to. Jude Bellingham too is affected; entrusted with a new role off the front last season – in part a response to Karim Benzema’s unexpected departure – and becoming the league’s most decisive performer, he may have to adapt again. All four started in Super Cup final against Atalanta on Wednesday night. They also have Endrick, an 18-year-old Brazilian striker who declared his admiration for an altogether more unexpected idol: Bobby Charlton. Yes, really.
“I’m not saying we will play the same way. Something will change, but not much,” Carlo Ancelotti insisted. “I think the system we use this season will be a 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2, the same as last year. Sometimes we played 4-3-3, sometimes 4-4-2, sometimes 4-2-3-1; we have the resources to play all three.”
As for Mbappé, he says: “I will play where the manager tells me. I come with ambition and humility. The priority is to adapt to the collective.” One comment sounded as if learned from Bale: “I don’t want to score a goal and just go home,” he insisted.
That message fits now, is easier to assimilate; had Mbappé come a year earlier it might not have, suggesting that the timing may not be a bad thing, that the human balance may be improved. He comes as a superstar sure, but not as a saviour. In those seven years, he didn’t win the Champions League but Madrid did, repeatedly.
Some have dared to imagine that they will be invincible now. That might be a fear, but it tends not to work like that. Mbappé’s arrival will be good for Spanish football, the league’s president, Javier Tebas, kept saying. And if those are words that sounded a little needy at times, focused more on the product than the play, this does not feel like a rescue operation as it once might have. He needs them as much as they him. And although he will step on to centre stage again, over the past month or so he has not dominated it alone, and nor will he this season.
Because there’s always something, someone. Because, when it comes down to what it’s supposed to come down to – actually playing football – Spain is very good at this. This summer they won Euro 2024, perhaps the best champions the competition has had. They won men’s Olympic gold. They won the European Under-19 Championship. Their women’s team are world champions. They have the Champions League winners in the men’s and women’s game. Now they have arguably the world’s best player. Arguable because of Vinícius and Bellingham and Euro 2024 shining a light on others, shifting perceptions for everyone, including the Spanish themselves.
The best of them, Rodri, plays in England, it is true. Fabián Ruiz is still at Paris Saint-Germain. Marc Cucurella drinks his Estrella and eats his paella in London. Álvaro Morata has departed for Milan, a human decision as much as a footballing one. And there was a crushing inevitability about Girona, the team that most challenged Madrid for much of last season, being dismantled – Aleix García, Savinho, Yan Couto and Eric García have all gone.
But that success has not led to an exodus, or a weakening, a similar stripping of the selección. It has instead been a kind of awakening. The talent was there, waiting to be seen. It was everywhere: Spain’s starting XI in the final had just one player each from Madrid and Barcelona. The goals were scored by Nico Williams and Mikel Oyarzabal, a player from admirable Basque sides Athletic and another from Real Sociedad. It probably won’t be for ever but it says something, something good, that as the league kicks off tonight, for all the pursuit, Williams and la Real’s Martin Zubimendi chose to stay at their current clubs.
Atlético Madrid have signed Alex Sørloth and Julián Álvarez; it is hard to remember the last time a new arrival caused such excitement. Maybe the warning is that the last time might have been João Félix. Conor Gallagher came, saw, and went back again, and now waits for his move to be confirmed.
Dani Olmo has come home: perhaps the standout player in Germany has returned to Barcelona, now led by Hansi Flick. He joins the most exciting player there is right now: Lamine Yamal, a European champion and scorer of that goal against France, a teenager pushed into a blinding glare but, they hope, with the talent to take it, to take them all. So no pressure kid. If Ronaldo welcomed Mbappé, still a kid, Lionel Messi anointed Lamine Yamal, still a baby: the most bizarre, unlikely, almost biblical story of the footballing summer, coinciding with another tale written up as destiny. The timing, in the end, was right. No, they are not alone, but here they are, thrust forward: two new faces of a familiar old, epic battle, played out on Spanish fields.
+ Sid Lowe in Madrid
