Kylian Mbappe’s Real Madrid season is barely three weeks old, and the Frenchman has already decided he is done letting other people frame it.
In an interview with L’Equipe that publishes in full on Friday, Mbappe pushes back hard at the idea that his goals somehow come with an asterisk attached — and delivers a line that will be repeated all season.
Kylian Mbappe’s Real Madrid critics and the defensive-work debate
The French paper trailed the interview on its social channels on Thursday evening, with the quotes carried in Spain by Mundo Deportivo. The first question put to him is the one that has followed him around the Bernabeu for two seasons: why do people talk about his pressing rather than his finishing?
“If people forget my goals and focus on the defensive work? It is not normal, but it is the life of someone who has been close to excellence for 10 years,” he said. “I am not new to this, everybody knows what I can do. It is human to look at what someone is not doing. When someone has been doing it for 10 years, we stop noticing, because we know he can do it, so we look at what he is not doing. I don’t take it personally.”
‘I have a healthy relationship with criticism’
There is no self-pity in any of it, which is the interesting part. The France captain frames the noise as an occupational hazard rather than an injustice, and insists it has never once altered a decision he has taken.
“I have a healthy relationship with criticism, because there is criticism that is constructive and other criticism that is more stupid, but that doesn’t frighten me when I have to make a decision,” he said. “I don’t tell myself I am going to be criticised when I make a decision. If I know the decision is right, or it is not right but it is necessary, I take it. I have shown in the past that I go head-on.”
‘It makes no sense’
What clearly does irritate him is the suggestion — a genuine talking point in Madrid last season — that his goals do not translate into trophies.
“It makes no sense. If I don’t score goals, they are going to ask me why I am not scoring,” he said. “As a footballer I have learned that there are millions of coaches in every game you play, and not all of those coaches are happy. Everyone has an opinion, but in football the objective is to score more goals than your opponent. A footballer who scores goals will never be a team’s problem.”
Why it lands this week
Timing is everything, and this arrives in a strange little window for Los Blancos. Mbappe was named the club’s player of the month for August on Thursday after four goals in three games, and he opened the scoring in Tuesday’s 2-1 win over Inter Milan. He was also whistled by his own supporters when he came off in stoppage time, as Vinicius Junior had been minutes earlier.
That night captured the whole argument in 90 minutes. Madrid won, Thibaut Courtois made seven saves, the football was heavy, and the frustration in the stands landed squarely on the forwards. The reaction to the booing has dominated the Spanish airwaves since, with Jose Mourinho, Raul and most of the Madrid punditry circuit weighing in.
Note, too, that this is Mbappe’s second public appearance in a week. He faced the media before the Inter game for the first time in almost two years — a deliberate choice, and one that now looks like the start of a longer campaign to set the terms of the conversation himself.
Mourinho’s version of this squad presses from the front and asks its attackers to win the ball high; both goals against Inter came from turnovers in the Italians’ half. Mbappe is not arguing against that. He is arguing that the ledger should still start with the goals column.
Madrid host Rayo Vallecano at the Bernabeu on Saturday, and the full interview lands the day before. Another Mbappe goal would settle the debate more efficiently than any of it.
