Kylian Mbappé’s superstardom shone so bright on the biggest stage that we all ran out of superlatives to properly discuss him. He carried France to a 2018 World Cup title at just 19 years old and then went strike for strike with Lionel Messi in the 2022 final, scoring a hat trick against Argentina in one of the most dramatic sporting events ever played. Mbappé has led his teams to the French Ligue 1 title seven times (once for Monaco, six times for Paris Saint-Germain). When he left PSG at 25, he had already secured his rank as the club’s all-time leading goal scorer, netting an astonishing 175 goals in 205 appearances. The only thing that eluded him—and PSG as a whole—was the coveted Champions League title.
PSG’s Qatari ownership group had invested considerable money into this singular goal, bringing global superstars like Neymar and Messi himself to Paris for a chance to win club soccer’s most prestigious prize. After years of Champions League heartbreak, Mbappé left PSG last summer for the one club he could count on to get over the line—defending champion and 15-time winner Real Madrid. Now, however, Real are out of the tournament after a 5-1 loss on aggregate to Arsenal. PSG, meanwhile, are still alive, heading to the semifinals. Mbappé is a player who should have nothing left to prove, the presumed heir to Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet the Champions League music is still playing, and the best player on the supposed best team somehow isn’t there.
To make matters worse for Mbappé, Real enter the weekend four points behind archrival Barcelona in La Liga. He won’t be able to contribute to the next league match after receiving a red card for a horrendous tackle that prompted scathing criticism across the soccer community. Mbappé very well might not win a major trophy in his first year at the club. Despite Mbappé’s goal production (32 goals in 49 appearances across all competitions), Real Madrid have struggled to adjust tactically and press opponents with him on the pitch. They’ve been disjointed from the opening matches, when Mbappé—a natural winger being forced to play centrally—and Vinicius Júnior were frequently occupying the same spaces on the left of Real Madrid’s attack.
And even though PSG don’t have Mbappé’s production anymore, manager Luis Enrique’s side looks more fluid and connected than ever. Not only has the French side beaten top seed Liverpool and Champions League upstart Aston Villa to reach the semifinals, but it is unbeaten in Ligue 1 this year.
As PSG have rampaged across Europe over the past four months, it’s become evident that Enrique’s side was actually a sleeping giant, awoken to prove one of the longest-running theories in all of sports: the Ewing Theory.
The Ewing Theory has been referenced in dozens of situations across the sports zeitgeist for as long as I can remember. The concept is simple: A team may actually benefit from the absence of a star player, just as Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown and New York Knicks seemed to do whenever he was out with an injury or on the bench. The term was popularized by The Ringer’s own Bill Simmons and created by his friend Dave Cirilli.
There are two key criteria for this theory to hold up under scrutiny.
First, “A star athlete receives an inordinate amount of media attention and fan interest, and yet his teams never win anything substantial with him.”
With Mbappé, this is a complicated one. He’s one of the most accomplished international players in history, and he’s still just 26. But let’s toss out international play, where a player spends far less of their professional time and where big tournaments come around only every two years, and focus solely on club matches. PSG have been snakebitten in the Champions League for years. While their Ligue 1 titles are mostly a formality due to a sizable financial advantage over their foes, PSG have often failed to win head-to-head against other European giants at the business end of the season.
Mbappé joined Paris in 2017-18. Starting that season, they lost in the round of 16 in consecutive years to Real Madrid and Manchester United. After reaching the final in 2020, Bayern Munich blanked them 1-0 to lift the trophy. Manchester City brushed them aside in 2021, and then Real Madrid and Bayern did the same in the following two seasons. The skies appeared to open for PSG to return to the final in Mbappé’s last dance with the club last season, but they hit the post six times across two legs and lost the semifinal to Borussia Dortmund. PSG’s Mbappé era was a combination of near misses, bad luck, and just not being quite good enough.
Which brings us to the second criterion: “That same athlete leaves his team—and both the media and fans immediately write off the team for the following season.”
When the Champions League tournament began in September, PSG were not considered one of the main six favorites by oddsmakers. Without Mbappé and his attacking prowess, why would they be?
The team made the decision to send defensive midfielder Manuel Ugarte to Manchester United in August. In their attack, the primary change was Mbappé out and 19-year-old Désiré Doué in. Doué was one of the most highly touted prospects in Europe, but we’re talking about a mostly unproven teenager in place of the supposed best player in the world. Along with Bradley Barcola, similarly young at 22 years old, and Ousmane Dembélé, who had routinely struggled with injuries, PSG looked short on goal-scoring output.
This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Parisians. As it turns out, PSG should have been one of the favorites all along, even without Mbappé.
Admittedly, the adjustment to life after Mbappé wasn’t totally smooth. PSG struggled in the Champions League league phase, losing 2-1 to Atlético Madrid, 1-0 to Bayern Munich, and 2-0 to Arsenal in the fall. As evidenced by the score lines, PSG offered very little attacking threat in the losses to Bayern and Arsenal, especially. They looked exactly like a team that had lost their best player and hadn’t really replaced him.
The Parisians needed results against Manchester City and Stuttgart in the final two weeks of group play just to qualify for the playoff round, and they needed more success there to advance to the round of 16. By the time those pivotal matches rolled around in January, PSG had fully morphed into a supernova. They beat City 4-2 and thrashed Stuttgart 4-1 to secure a playoff showdown with fellow French side Brest, whom PSG utterly dismantled 10-0 on aggregate across two matches.
Others may have doubted, but Enrique always believed his team could be better without focusing the entire tactical plan around their former superstar.
“I was very brave last season when I told you we’d have a better team in attack and defense [without Mbappé],” Enrique said in February. “I still think we’re better in attack and defense; the figures are there to say it. The players took it as a challenge.”
Mbappé is a world-class outlet on the left wing and a lethal poacher in the box, but he doesn’t offer much defensive work when the other team has the ball. He’s often standing around on the shoulder of the opposition’s last defender, waiting for his moment to pounce. If he receives the ball, there’s basically no one who can stop him one-on-one.
Mbappé’s terrifying pace and dribbling ability can often paralyze opponents, but they also hampered PSG’s ability to utilize the multifaceted and free-flowing attack that the best Enrique sides have employed. If you were a midfielder playing for PSG last year, you basically had one job when facilitating the attack: find Mbappé in space and play the ball. This worked exceptionally well to a degree. Mbappé scored 44 goals last year in all competitions. Gonçalo Ramos was the only other PSG player to score double-digit goals. Mbappé attempted 204 shots last season. No other PSG player attempted more than 88.
Running the attack through the best wide forward in the world was a reasonable plan, and it won PSG plenty of soccer matches. But what they have now is far more difficult to defend. Mbappé’s departure has coincided with PSG’s embrace of youth, specifically French youth. Only two teams in Europe’s top five leagues—Chelsea and Strasbourg—have a younger average playing squad age than PSG this season.
Last season, Barcola showed flashes of great left-wing play. The young Frenchman had five goals and nine assists in 26 starts across all competitions, but he was stuck in the shadow of Mbappé. Not anymore. This year, he’s taken the leap into stardom with 18 goals and 15 assists in 38 starts.
Earlier this month, Doué introduced himself on the global stage with his curling equalizer against Aston Villa in PSG’s eventual 3-1 win. As if PSG didn’t have enough options out wide, they added Georgian playmaker Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in January from Napoli. The move seemed a bit redundant at the time, given PSG already had four players competing for three spots in Doué, Barcola, Ramos, and Dembélé, but Kvaratskhelia’s winner against Villa in the first leg had shades of Mbappé himself. Just look at this vintage chop dribble and thunderbolt finish into the top netting:
Dembélé, at 27, is the elder statesman of the PSG attack. Before Mbappé was the next big thing following Messi and Ronaldo, many thought Dembélé could be that player. His absurd pace, two-footed dribbling skills, and ability to navigate tight spaces caught the eyes of Dortmund and Barcelona before he turned 21. Injuries and inconsistent finishing hampered much of his six-year spell with Barcelona, but in 2025, he has been arguably the best player in the world. He’ll have a very strong case for the Ballon d’Or if he shines in the final three matches of this competition.
I don’t think this breakout would have happened if Mbappé still played for PSG. Enrique has moved Dembélé centrally to play more of a striker role, but the team has been so difficult to stop because any of their five attackers can interchange and occupy any of the spaces. Their attacking strategy is more unpredictable without Mbappé, and the goals can—and have—come from everywhere this season.
Goal Contributions for PSG This Season
Dembélé also does a lot more defensive work off the ball compared to Mbappé, which helps spearhead a much more effective press. All of their forwards are committed to pressing opponents. That hasn’t been true of a PSG team in years. The Parisians are winning the ball off their opponents more often and higher up the pitch, partially thanks to the efforts of new signing João Neves, who is thriving as one of Europe's dominant midfielders. (He’s in the 96th percentile in tackles won, according to FBref.) Add in the elite passing range of fellow midfielders Fabián Ruiz and Vitinha and the press resistance of Warren Zaïre-Emery, and Enrique has assembled one of the continent’s most complete teams. This PSG core had been questioned in past years for being excellent in possession but light in midfield and unable to effectively win the ball off opponents.
PSG haven’t won the Champions League—yet. They’ll face Arsenal, who arguably have the world’s best defense, in a two-legged semifinal starting April 29. But the rest of the world was already put on notice when the French side thoroughly outplayed soon-to-be Premier League champions Liverpool in the round of 16. With either Barcelona or Inter Milan waiting in the final, it might be too soon to categorize PSG as the favorites—but they certainly aren’t the underdogs. Not anymore.
The esteemed Ewing Theory Committee has carefully considered the evidence and determined its verdict.
PSG is better without Kylian Mbappé, and it’s not even close.
