“Good morning everyone,” said Kylian Mbappé. Please be patient, I will check out to speak in Spanish.
No excuse needed. Mbappé’s perfect Spanish was understood perfectly by the 80,000 Real Madrid fans who gathered at the Santiago Bernabéu for his presentation last month.
“Wow, it’s being here,” Mbappe continued, obviously impressed by the welcome. “I have dreamed for many years of playing for Real Madrid. I want to especially thank all the madridistas because for many years they have given me a lot of affection, a lot of love, which goes straight to the heart. .
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It is not uncommon for a new player to say that he has dreamed of betting on his new club.
But it’s rare for a signatory to speak of such love if he’s scored important goals against his new club, while turning down public offers to come and play for him.
In this case, the message made sense. The story of Mbappé growing up as a Madrid fan and idolizing former Galacticos Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo is also a part of Bernabeu folklore. He began learning Spanish as a teenager so he could move to Madrid. Many in the Spanish capital consider him one of their own long before his arrival after his breakdown from Paris Saint-Germain.
On the morning of his presentation, Mbappé stopped at Madrid’s educational venue to greet new coach Carlo Ancelotti and sign his contract with president Florentino Pérez at the club’s offices. The facilities in Valdebebas, a suburb of Madrid, have replaced a lot since their first stopover in December 2012.
At that time, they did everything possible to impress Mbappé, who turned 14 that week. Zidane, then Pérez’s advisor without a formal role in Madrid after his legendary career in the game, accompanied him at all times. This was discussed at the forward’s presentation in July. when never-before-seen footage was released of the two men arguing at one of Mbappé’s test matches.
Here, with Zidane. @TheAthleticFC pic. twitter. com/vD0nSFp0Ee
– Mario Cortegana (@MarioCortegana) July 16, 2024
Mbappe also first experienced the Bernabeu atmosphere that week, when Zidane welcomed him and his family circle for a league match against Espanyol. It already seemed fate. At the age of eight he won a stadium style as a gift. “One day I will take you all to Real Madrid and we will be in the VIP seats,” Mbappe told his parents at Christmas.
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The game was not much fun from a Madrid perspective — Ronaldo and Fabio Coentrao scored, but Espanyol fought back for a 2-2 draw to leave Jose Mourinho’s team 10 points behind arch-rivals Barcelona in the title race.
But Mbappé left happy, especially because Zidane took him to Ronaldo after the game. A photograph of the assembly was soon proudly displayed in his room in Bondy, a suburb of Paris. Not that the teenager Mbappé and his entourage let too many feelings influence their professional decisions.
The summer after his stopover in the Spanish capital, he turned down an offer from Madrid and joined Monaco’s youth system. “I was not in a position to pass and leave my friends and my country behind,” he later told Le Parisien.
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But the bond between the boy from Bondy and the Bernabéu remains strong. Many Madrid residents saw him make his Ligue 1 debut with Monaco at the age of 16, before scoring 26 goals in matches in his first full season.
In the summer of 2017, when Mbappé was only 18 years old, the hierarchy of Madrid and Monaco agreed on a €180 million operation. But, on the recommendation of the then white coach, Zidane, he made the decision to sign for PSG. As luck would have it, Madrid and PSG faced each other in the round of 16 of the Champions League the following season.
It meant that Mbappe had the first opportunity to play at the Bernabeu against his dream team in the first leg in February 2018. Mbappe’s cross around the 30th minute went through Neymar for Adrien Rabiot to put PSG ahead, before Ronaldo scored twice in a 3-1 win for Madrid. Ronaldo also scored in the 2-1 win in the second leg to help Madrid qualify.
Mbappe won the World Cup with France that summer and for a moment focused entirely on PSG.
But no one in Madrid had forgotten it. When Eden Hazard signed for Chelsea in the summer of 2019, many Real Madrid fans chanted “We need Mbappe” at the Belgian’s presentation at the Bernabeu, causing some embarrassment for Perez.
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UEFA then committed to bringing PSG and Madrid together in the organization of the 2019-20 Champions League. An injury kept Mbappé out of the first game in Paris, which PSG won 3-0, but his star power was demonstrated through the sold-out second leg at the Bernabéu, which has 81,044 seats.
During the reading of the line-ups before kick-off, the madridistas whistled their player, Gareth Bale, but cheered Mbappé’s name. On the pitch, two goals from Karim Benzema gave Madrid control. Mbappé appeared slightly, until Thibaut Courtois gave him a touch.
Mbappé’s birthday party, his 70th goal in just a hundred games for PSG, strangely discreet. The Bernabéu crowd reacted to their team’s goal by chanting: “Sign now”. Madrid’s Pablo Sarabia scored an unlikely equaliser as PSG pulled it to a 2-2 draw, meaning both teams were ready to qualify, but for many, the result isn’t the most important thing.
Instead, pre- and post-match conversations focused on how Madrid could convince Mbappé to sign for them. An article published that week in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo claimed that an agreement was already in place for him to terminate his contract with PSG and join Madrid in a loose move in the summer of 2022.
A weak move by Mbappe was still the most likely end result, given that PSG were unwilling to sell.
Many at the Bernabeu assumed that the €180 million their club would offer in the summer of 2021, for a player with only one year left on his contract, was more about making Mbappe appear, who they were still looking for, than waiting for the offer to be accepted. .
All of this added to the drama when Madrid and PSG found themselves combined in the Champions League round of 16 in February 2022. Mbappé still had 4 months left on his contract with PSG and confidence at the Bernabéu that he would soon be his.
His strong performance in the first leg in Paris sparked even more mixed feelings. Playing wide on the left, he tormented Madrid right-back Dani Carvajal, who conceded a penalty for tripping him on the hour mark. Lionel Messi, then at PSG, took the loose shot, Courtois savedArray
Mbappé will not be rejected. When the game was almost over, he deceived Madrid defenders Eder Militao and Lucas Vázquez, and then fired a low shot into the far corner.
The passionate birthday party that followed was much scrutinized. Some in Paris had questioned his commitment to the team, while he was paying his mammoth salary. Madrid fans and officials weren’t sure how they felt: their team had lost a game, but the vision of a long-term perspective was exciting. The next day, Marca’s marquee focused on the positive, proclaiming: “How smart Mbappé is!” »
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Three weeks later, in Madrid, Mbappé began to play even better. Courtois forced two difficult saves in the first 12 minutes. Shortly after the half-hour mark, an adorable side-kick hit the narrow area between the goalkeeper and the post, but the goal was disallowed due to teammate Nuno Mendes deflecting wide. Shortly after, what seemed inevitable happened when Mbappé ran clearly and shot with confidence.
The Bernabeu crowd watched in silence. Early in the second half, Mbappe deceived Courtois and shot into an empty net, only to be thwarted by another offside flag. However, PSG kept the 2-0 and the draw was almost over.
Then came a mistake by goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma for Benzema to take one. Suddenly, energy flooded the stadium, PSG were stunned and Benzema scored two more goals to complete a hat-trick in less than 20 minutes and Madrid sealed another remarkable comeback. .
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Obviously, Mbappé had been the exceptional player in this draw, but he was out of competition. He had also witnessed the strength and excitement at the Bernabeu when Madrid turned the tide in this way, albeit from the other side. Most Madrileños think even more likely that he himself would soon enjoy that feeling in his iconic white jersey.
That, in fact, was the expectation the next time Mbappé appeared in the Spanish capital, to make a stopover with his PSG teammate Achraf Hakimi, a Moroccan from Madrid and foreigner who began his career at Real.
The main points were reported breathlessly through the partisan media in Madrid. Mbappé and Hakimi stayed at the Eurostars Madrid Tower hotel, in a skyscraper built on the site of Real Madrid’s former educational field. They ate at the Lena steakhouse, not far from the Bernabeu, a favorite of the Madrid players. Then they went to the Opio Madrid nightclub, also frequented by the young footballers of the city.
Mbappé himself announced his presence in the city on social media, which was widely perceived as a trace that he would soon be living there permanently, as the Frenchman and his team were meant to know.
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All this made the surprise and sadness even greater a few weeks later, when PSG announced that Mbappé had agreed a new contract to remain with them. It was a blow to many at the Bernabeu, which did not entirely dissipate as they beat Liverpool to win another Champions League trophy in Paris.
After all this disappointment, Mbappé did return to Madrid to spend two years.
In October 2022 he reported that he would accompany his PSG teammates, including former Real Madrid players Sergio Ramos and Navas, to a bullfight in the city’s Las Ventas arena, but he did not show up. He visited Ramos’ cattle ranch near the defender’s. Seville’s hometown the following month, but the French have not been seen anywhere near the Spanish capital.
The Madridistas followed closely. They applauded him when he scored a hat-trick for France in the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, and shared his pain when former Barcelona icon Messi’s Argentina won instead of him.
Last January, when it seemed that he would leave at the end of his contract next June, the exaggeration of everything Mbappé achieved returned to the Bernabéu. Madrid fans were doubly happy in April when his brace knocked Barca out of the competition. Champions League quarter-finals.
But the extent of their regular bond did not become apparent until Mbappé showed up in July.
That day, he walked into the press room of the new Bernabeu logo, beaming, as he embraced the celebrated stadium style he had conquered as a child nearly two decades ago.
“This morning I woke up with a lot of tension,” he said in perfect Spanish. “I thought I had to enjoy every second of it, if my nerves allowed me. The fans and the affection that the fans have shown me”. It’s amazing. I feel like a member of this family.
Many new players make emotional statements in their early days at a new club, but the link between Mbappe and Madrid has existed for more than a decade. It has taken a while to become a reality, and on Wednesday night in Warsaw, when Madrid face Atalanta in the UEFA Super Cup, we deserve, despite everything, to see it in person.
(Top photo: Diego Souto/Getty Images)