Questions surrounding the mercurial French forward will grow ever louder if he posts another season without a major trophy. With the countdown to the 2026 World Cup firmly on, The Game Magazine columnist Andy Murray wonders if Mbappe has already had his peak.
Kylian Mbappé: What shaped the French star from Bondy to Madrid?
From the Paris suburbs to Madrid, Kylian Mbappé’s career has been built on speed, timing and development. At 12, Kylian Mbappé sat in Zinedine Zidane’s car on the way to Real Madrid’s training ground, an early marker of the path he would take years later. He started in Bondy, where coaching at AS Bondy under his father Wilfried and guidance from his mother Fayza Lamari set the base.
Clairefontaine refined the talent that had already attracted Europe’s elite. Monaco gave him first-team minutes and a record as the club’s youngest debutant, then a breakout season that led to Paris Saint-Germain. With PSG, he became a global figure and a World Cup winner with France at 19. Madrid now provides the platform and expectations that come with LaLiga, the Bernabéu and leadership for Les Bleus. This article traces the places, mentors and positions that formed his game.
Has Kylian Mbappe already missed out on the Ballon d’Or that seemed inevitable?
By Andy Murray
Kylian Mbappe sat in Zinedine Zidane’s car and didn’t know what to do.
It was 2012, and arguably the finest footballer France had ever produced, now Real Madrid’s sporting director, had just picked up the precocious 12-year-old from the Spanish capital’s Barajas Airport and was about to drive Mbappe to los Blancos’ Valdebebas training ground for a tour and meet-and-greet. An awestruck Mbappe asked Zizou if he should remove his shoes.
“I was just thinking to myself: ‘I’m in Zizou’s car,’” Mbappe later said. “I’m Kylian from Bondy. This isn’t real – I must still be sleeping on the plane.” The pre-teen from the Parisian suburbs got a guided tour of the facilities from Zidane himself, watched training and got the photo with his hero Cristiano Ronaldo that has since become famous.
Real Madrid don’t roll out the carpet like this for just anyone, let alone a boy whose voice had barely broken. Yet this was no ordinary 12-year-old. Already selected for the prestigious Clairefontaine national academy in south-west France, his room covered floor to ceiling with posters of CR7, Mbappe had been invited to train with Chelsea and interested Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Manchester City. Even at such a tender age, this was a luxuriously gifted forward seemingly destined for greatness.
Within six years, having rejected Madrid’s overtures in favour of Monaco’s reputation for developing elite young talent, Mbappe had joined Paris Saint-Germain as the world’s most expensive teenager, the second costliest player in history after new team-mate Neymar and won the World Cup. Four years after that, still only 22, he was a penalty shootout (and some Lionel Messi genius) away from retaining that world crown.
The Ballon d’Or and regular Champions League glory – probably at Real Madrid, whose courtship of their one that got away only became more intense while at PSG – seemed a fait accompli. Yet, less than 12 months out from the 2026 World Cup, only the inevitable transfer to become Los Blancos’ latest Galactico has come to pass. More than that, cracks are even beginning to form in the Mbappe armoury, the sense that he needs a big World Cup to finally take the next step to Messi-Ronaldo levels of production.
Such an ascension seemed assured because his gifts were so bountiful and early rise so exponential. First coached by his Cameroonian father Wilfried at AS Bondy, a commune of north-eastern Paris known for a high immigrant population, Mbappe immediately stood out.
“You could tell he was different,” said Antonio Riccardi, another Bondy youth coach. “Kylian could do much more than the other children. His dribbling was already fantastic and he was much faster than the others. He was the best player I’ve ever seen in 15 years coaching here.”
Snapped up by Monaco aged 14 in 2013 after preferring to stay in France over Madrid or Chelsea, Mbappe made his senior debut on the Cote d’Azur in two years. In December 2015, aged 16 years and 347 days, the elfin forward broke Thierry Henry’s record as Monaco’s youngest player by coming off the bench for the final two minutes of a 1-1 draw with Caen, a team whose financial troubles had prevented them signing the very history now in their midst. A first senior goal followed in February against Troyes at Stade Louis II, another youngest record for the now 17-year-old.
In 2016/17 came the explosion. A hat-trick in the Coupe de la Ligue last 16 against Rennes in December, another triple against Metz the following February, before the game in which he announced himself to Europe and beyond. Monaco may have lost 5-3 at Manchester City in the first leg of the Champions League last 16, but there was no doubting who was the star. Playing off the left wing in support of experienced centre-forward Radamel Falcao, Mbappe scored and provided constant jet-heeled menace. In the second leg, he opened the scoring as les Monegasques came from behind to knock out Pep Guardiola’s Premier League giants. He scored in both legs of the quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund and ended the campaign with 26 in all competitions as Monaco beat PSG to the Ligue 1 title.
Mbappe’s sale in the summer of 2017 became inevitable, PSG not unreasonably deciding that here was a generational French talent they could pair with recently arrived world-record signing Neymar in a stellar frontline. A domestic treble duly followed. A €200m fee deemed worth it.
At a tournament – erroneously, as it turned out – billed as Messi and Ronaldo’s last dance, Mbappe then bent the 2018 World Cup to his will. Still only 19, he scored the group stage winner against Peru to guarantee France a spot in the knockout stages, before delivering the singular performance for which he will be eternally remembered. It wasn’t just the two goals against Argentina in the last 16 – the first a touch and hit of lightning speed and precision, the second a calm side foot while galloping at full pace – Mbappe’s whole display was breathtaking. The fear engendered in la Albiceleste’s backline was palpable, Marcos Rojo’s rugby tackle of Mbappe in the penalty area the only way to stop this wildebeest stampede, crossed with feline control.
That brace made him the first teenage since Pele in 1958 to score twice in a World Cup match. “It’s flattering to be the second one after Pele,” said Mbappe post-game, “but let’s put things into context – Pele is in another category.”
A goal in the 4-2 final victory over Croatia only served to back up those Pele comparisons from 60 years earlier. “Welcome to the club,” tweeted O Rei. “It’s great to have some company! If Kylian keeps equalling my records like this, I may have to dust my boots off again.”
Mbappe would go on to win five of the next six Ligue 1 titles with PSG and reach a second successive World Cup final, becoming the first player since Geoff Hurst in 1966 to score a hat-trick in a men’s showpiece. Yet questions were beginning to be asked. Where was the Champions League title? Was the individualism that made Mbappe’s game so compelling actually holding back club and country?
Even to score that 2022 World Cup final hat-trick against Argentina – two of the three from the penalty spot, plus a sensational volley – Mbappe had to be moved from his preferred left-wing station by coach Didier Deschamps to play through the middle because he couldn’t be trusted to adequately carry out his defensive duties. With Messi now a PSG team-mate, a trident with Neymar was outrageously gifted, but also supremely indolent without the ball – the ageing Messi couldn’t press, while neither Neymar nor Mbappe would.
PSG fans grew restless. For much of the 2021/22 campaign, the Parc des Princes’ crowd had booed Mbappe relentlessly despite him scoring 39 times in all competitions, with his contract due to expire the summer before the 2022 World Cup and the forward showing no particular desire to sign a new one. The Real Madrid move, they believed, was sure to finally happen. Suddenly, though, he decided to stay.
Playing for a Qatari-owned club desperate to have one of the planet’s top stars in their squad at a time when the oil-rich Gulf state would host the World Cup later that year helped, but so did an intervention closer to home.
French President Emmanuel Macron got involved. Desperate to court PSG’s Qatari owners and entice them to invest further in the country, Macron met with Mbappe. “He told me: ‘I want you to stay. I don’t want you to leave now. You are so important for the country,’” recalled Mbappe. “When the president says that to you, that counts.”
Mother Fayza Lamari, who also acts as his Mbappe’s agent, wanted him to go. Father Wilfried preferred for his son to stay. Ultimately, Mbappe Jnr signed a two-year deal until the summer of 2024. At the time, it was the biggest contract in world football.
Yet even here, there were smoke and mirrors. To announce the new contract, Mbappe had walked out onto the Parc des Princes pitch holding up a shirt that read ‘2025’, his deal containing a one-year option to extend. Cue a two-year soap opera of claim and counterclaim to a series of signing, loyalty and other bonuses that PSG objected to paying for 2023/24 when Mbappe informed the club in June 2023 he wouldn’t take the year’s option and would leave the following summer on a free transfer.
This time there would be no volte face – on June 4, 2024, Real Madrid announced the kid that Zidane & Co. had attempted to woo 12 years previously had signed a five-year contract. In a shimmering French summer dominated by swimmer Leon Marchand and judoka Teddy Riner’s stellar achievements at the Paris Olympics, Mbappe fell off his perch as his country’s most exalted sportsman. Even his mural in his former home Bondy, was defaced.
Things hardly improved back home when he was deemed unavailable for France selection in the autumn internationals, only to play Madrid’s final fixture before the international break. Plenty had already put Antoine Griezmann’s unexpected international retirement down to Mbappe stealing in ahead of the Atletico Madrid forward to succeed Hugo Lloris as France captain.
In Spain, he said all the right things, knowing that his favoured left-wing position was already occupied by Vinicius Jnr and he’d likely have to play as a centre-forward. “I’m not mad: I know that when a player like me turns up, a lot of things change,” he said in September. “You don’t just turn up and say, ‘it’s my team.’ Football doesn’t work like that.”
Individually, his first season at the Bernabeu was an unqualified success. Mbappe scored 42 times in 2024/25, more than any other Blanco player in a debut campaign, Cristiano Ronaldo included, and lit up the Champions League with a stunning hat-trick in the playoff round against Manchester City and another triple against Barcelona in the second Liga Clasico of the season.
Nevertheless, he finished without a major trophy for the first time since his debut season in 2015/16, with only the FIFA Intercontinental Cup – a glorified ceremonial tournament at best – the only title added to Madrid’s bulging trophy cabinet. Despite scoring in the Copa del Rey final against Barça, Madrid lost 3-2 and trailed their bitter Catalan rivals by four points as Liga runners-up. When it really mattered in the Champions League quarter-final against Arsenal, Mbappe was anonymous. He had also failed to score in the last 16 against Atletico Madrid.
Worse still was who went on to win the Champions League. Since Mbappe’s exit, PSG have gone stratospheric by dint of Luis Enrique’s relentless high press and recruitment of either young players such as Vitinha, Joao Neves or genius Georgian international Khvicha Kvaratskhelia or those with points to prove. After failing to scale the heights in three unhappy seasons at Barcelona, Ousmane Dembele is now the favourite to win the Ballon d’Or after scoring 35 in 53 outings in all competitions to win Ligue 1 and the Champions League.
When Enrique praised the collective after winning the trophy the club has coveted most – and which Mbappe was unable to deliver – it felt instructive. “This is not an individual sport,” he said, the subtext not hard to spot. The Spanish coach had an XI that now worked as hard off the ball as on it.
A matter of days after dropping court proceedings against PSG, having accused them of “moral harassment” in trying to get him to sign a new deal, Mbappe’s current club faced his erstwhile charges at the Club World Cup. PSG won 4-0, a victory so comprehensive they seemingly stopped trying after going three up inside 24 minutes.
That was Mbappe’s first start of the tournament, the diminishing of Madrid’s hitherto revolutionised press under new manager Xabi Alonso conspicuous with homegrown forward Gonzalo Garcia deployed at centre-forward returned to the bench. Furthermore, the Vinicius Jnr problem continued. While Mbappe has already forged a strong bond with Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo, his relationship with Madrid’s other principal attacking threat is cooler. There’s mutual respect there, yes, but warmth? Not really. On the pitch, it’s similar. Across los Blancos’ 68 games in all competitions last season, Mbappe and Vinicius Jnr only scored in the same game on eight occasions. Only 15% of Vinicius Jnr’s passes go to Mbappe, who sends even fewer (13%) back the other way.
In short, the 2025/26 campaign and subsequent World Cup feels vital for the Mbappe legacy. Now wearing his beloved No.10 jersey after Luka Modric’s summer exit to AC Milan, Kylian Mbappe must deliver major honours for Real Madrid – 15-time European champions, remember – and display a necessary willingness to subjugate himself for club and country for the good of the collective.
Otherwise, the player who seemed certain to dominate the post-Messi-Ronaldo world with Ballon d’Or after Ballon d’Or is in danger of being overtaken by his own hubris.
Cover photo: IMAGO / Bildbyran / Petter Arvidson | FIFA World Cup Final 2018:
Kylian Mbappe of France celebrates with the trophy after winning the FIFA World Cup final against Croatia at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia, on July 15, 2018.
