Mbappé, an Atomic Bomb Without an Army Who Saves Honour with the Golden Boot

Kylian Mbappé has fulfilled his part of the bargain. The Bondy star joined Real Madrid last summer with the intention of putting his devastating offensive arsenal at the service of a champion team that was expected to gain even more momentum under the leadership of one of the world's best strikers. The first factor of the equation worked as planned, but the outcome was not as expected. The Frenchman ends his debut season wearing the white jersey with a bag full of goals that, however, have not helped Carlo Ancelotti's team to claim major trophies.

The French prodigy shattered the record of 37 goals held since 1993 by Iván Zamorano as the best debutant scorer to have graced Chamartín, scored in all four finals he played, left his mark in Montjuic with a hat-trick that, however, proved futile to keep the league open, and clinched the Golden Boot and Pichichi after overtaking Robert Lewandowski in the final stretch of the championship, summarising a season where he improved over time. Yet, the upward trajectory of the '9' has not been enough to save a squad that failed against Arsenal in the Champions League, succumbed to Barça in the league, and also fell to the Catalans in the Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup finals.

The UEFA Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup represent a meagre collective haul for an area predator who arrived at Chamartín in search of the footballing crown he could not achieve at PSG and who will have the Club World Cup as his last hope to sweeten the campaign and add merits, in passing, to contend in the race for a Ballon d'Or that has also eluded him so far.

But, regardless of what happens in that FIFA-sponsored tournament, Mbappé has dispelled any doubts with his performances about who should be the keystone of a Real Madrid that started the season under the banner of the 'Fantastic Four', but in which only the 2018 World Cup champion has maintained his status as magnificent.

While Vinicius and Rodrygo lost prominence and Bellingham saw the spotlight dim after his dazzling arrival at Concha Espina, the French star left behind a stormy start to the campaign, where more was said about the trip to Stockholm, the alleged lack of adaptation to his new team, and even his mental health was questioned, to shine brightly amidst the blackout that plunged Real Madrid into darkness. The 43 goals scored in the 56 matches he played place him in the wake of Cristiano Ronaldo, Ferenc Puskas, Karim Benzema, or Alfredo Di Stéfano, all figures who were able to sustain the insatiable ambition of a club with their scoring voracity.

Even so, Mbappé has not been able to remove the thorn of the Champions League, a competition that at Real Madrid always separates the wheat from the chaff and in which the '9' only donned the hero's cape by burying a caricatured Manchester City with four goals in the round of 16 play-offs. Unnoticed in the group stage, he tiptoed through the ties against Atlético and Arsenal, where he could not operate as the atomic bomb Real Madrid relied on to win a war faced with many desertions in its army. The Club World Cup offers them a chance for redemption.