The majority of the soccer world responded to Real Madrid’s June Champions League win against Borussia Dortmund with a collective shrug.
It’s no longer a surprise when Real Madrid wins the Champions League. Whether they need late comebacks or penalty shootouts, there is an air of inevitability about them. Even though Dortmund outplayed Madrid for much of the first half, Madrid is better at flipping the switch than any other team in the world. Their knack for scoring timely goals to survive and win has become a staple of the Champions League knockout stage.
That ability was on display in the second half of the June 1 final. Their shortest player on the pitch, Dani Carvajal, headed home the winner from a corner to capture another title. The trophy marked their 15th Champions League title and sixth since 2014. I visited the Santiago Bernabéu, Real Madrid’s stadium, for a tour this summer. The walk through trophy room after trophy room emphasizes the almost comical absurdity of their dominance of Spanish and European soccer. It’s unlike any other sports stadium tour I’ve ever experienced.
As sports fans, we love dynasties. We value their sustained greatness and the efforts of challengers to dethrone them. However, we do not appreciate it when dynasties attempt to become monopolies by acquiring all of the talent and disrupting the delicate competitive balance of our favorite sports.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but when, one of the consensus best players in the world would join Europe’s most successful club. Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappé have been flirting with each other since Mbappé first broke onto the world scene as a superstar. Mbappé said in his club introduction that he dreamed for many years of playing for the Spanish club and specifically thanked the Madridistas for their love and admiration over the years. Now that he’s finally arrived, things haven’t gone as well as expected. Los Blancos started the 2024-25 season as heavy favorites to win the Spanish league and co-favorites to win the Champions League. However, Madrid suffered a 4-0 loss to rival Barcelona in El Clásico, and currently sit in second place in La Liga, two points behind Barcelona with a game in hand. They’re on pace for about 10 fewer points than they managed last season—without their new French megastar.
Mbappé has failed to score on crucial penalty kicks, and has struggled to consistently mesh with Madrid’s other superstar attackers. As a result, Real Madrid’s attacking numbers are worse than they were last season.
The struggles have been even more pronounced in the Champions League, which over the past decade could’ve be more appropriately named the “Real Madrid Invitational.” Los Blancos are 20th out of 36 teams after six matches. The club is at risk of not qualifying for the knockout round (top 24) for the first time in its history if it doesn’t win either of its final two games in January. Most likely, Real Madrid will enter the playoff round after failing to qualify as a top-eight team.
Mbappé scored the opening goal in Real Madrid’s crucial 3-2 win against Atalanta on Tuesday, before being substituted off in the 36th minute with a thigh injury. It’s not considered serious, but he won’t play the weekend league match at Rayo Vallecano. Mbappé had started to find some form with four goals in his past six matches, so the timing is unfortunate for him.
Even with some uptick in recent production, Mbappé and Real Madrid’s attacking numbers have declined from last season, and the signing hasn’t come close to meeting expectations on the pitch.
Mbappé burst onto the European scene as a wide-eyed 17-year-old, scoring 15 league goals for Monaco and helping guide them to both a Ligue 1 title and Champions League semifinal appearance. Monaco beat both Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund in high-profile knockout ties, and his performance in those matches fueled his meteoric ascension as one of the game’s brightest and youngest stars.
The biggest fish in the European soccer pond immediately came in to scoop up the premier talent from Monaco. Mbappé made his first big move to Paris Saint-Germain, as the Parisian native opted to stay in France instead of moving abroad to a bigger league in England or Spain. Playing at home in France helped build his national image as the country’s biggest emerging sports star.
Once he spearheaded France’s 2018 World Cup victory in Russia at age 19, becoming the second teenager, after Pelé, to score in a World Cup final, his stardom reached deity status. Mbappé’s rapid ascension to the top of the sport immediately raised the question of how long he’d actually stay at PSG, a nouveau riche club still not quite part of the traditional elite.
With Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo aging past their peaks, Mbappé was the player most ready to take the mantle as the best current player in the world.
His performance in the 2022 World Cup felt like the proverbial passing of the torch. Messi finally captured the elusive World Cup title and scored two goals in the final, as Argentina beat France. The final was one of the most captivating sporting events I have ever watched, in part because Mbappé carried France into the shootout. Messi lifted the trophy, but Mbappé won the Golden Boot and became the second man to ever score a hat trick in a World Cup final. That ensuing summer, surely, would be the summer he joined Real Madrid. But he didn’t.
Real Madrid bought Jude Bellingham from Borussia Dortmund as their star summer signing, and Mbappé decided to play out the string in his final year at PSG. With Bellingham and Brazilian winger Vinicius Júnior headlining the attack, Real Madrid won La Liga by 10 points—with its total of 95 the highest by any Real Madrid team since 2011-12. Then came the Champions League victory over Dortmund.
Two days after that triumph, Real Madrid announced that Mbappé was joining the club. The news felt akin to the Warriors signing Kevin Durant following their loss to the Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. At least, in that case, the Warriors had actually lost.
Real Madrid was already at the top, and adding Mbappé was cementing a third era of Galacticos football in the Spanish capital. Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez hasn’t been shy about his attempts to recruit and sign the world’s best and most expensive players every summer, using the vast history and seemingly endless resources at the club’s disposal as the ultimate bargaining chip. Mbappé’s old contract had already expired, so Real Madrid didn’t have to buy him from PSG. He came on a free transfer, albeit with a 125 million euro signing bonus and the highest wages at the club.
Mbappé scored a goal in his first competitive match with the club, a 2-0 win against Atalanta in the UEFA Super Cup on Aug. 14. Mbappé’s first trophy with Real Madrid was secured, and the club was off and running and prepared to dominate Europe once again.
It took less than a week for the reality of Real Madrid’s flaws to come to the forefront.
Their first La Liga match on Aug. 18 ended in a 1-1 draw at Mallorca. Madrid created just 0.6 expected goals, and the sluggish attack suggested that this transition into the Mbappé era might not be as seamless as they’d hoped. Mbappé and Vini are both natural left wingers—the two best in the world. They are both dominant dribblers and ball carriers who are world class at beating defenders one on one or using their rapid pace to receive passes behind a defensive line. Thus far, Mbappé has mostly played centrally for Real Madrid when he and Vini share the pitch, but they’ve occupied the same spaces and roles in the attack far too often.
Through 16 La Liga matches, Madrid’s overall production numbers tell the story clearly: the defensive numbers are similar, but the attacking output has declined.
Real Madrid Non-Penalty xG Per Match (La Liga)
Real Madrid Non-Penalty xG Allowed Per Match (La Liga)
When you watch Real Madrid, you see a team that looks a lot like Mbappé’s France team at Euro 2024: one that struggles to break down inferior teams. Mbappé, Bellingham, and Vini are some of the best off-ball runners in the game who are also devastatingly effective on the counterattack when they have ample space to exploit. However, the lack of high-quality forward passing from midfield and defensive positions is limiting those players’ ability to break teams down. They’ve also struggled against opponents who are willing to press them aggressively.
Real Madrid lost midfield maestro Toni Kroos to retirement and have yet to find a suitable replacement. The 39-year-old Luka Modric remains at the club, but at this point he is more of a squad player and cannot start every week.
Eduardo Camavinga and Aurélien Tchouaméni were expected to be the next generation of elite Real Madrid midfielders. While they bring defensive value with their ball-winning abilities, both have also been deputized as back-line defenders due to injury issues. Tchouaméni even started as a center back on Tuesday in the Champions League match against Atalanta. Still, even in their preferred positions, Tchouaméni and Camavinga have not yet developed the forward passing range of Kroos and Modric.
The lack of synergy in Real Madrid’s gameplay has become evident in their toughest matches this season. In the 4-0 defeat against Barcelona, Mbappé was caught offside eight times, which tied a La Liga single-match record from 2009. Barcelona’s high defensive line will concede a ton of big scoring chances, if you’re able to properly time passes from deeper positions. Real Madrid and Mbappé struggled to execute that strategy, and Barcelona comfortably won the match as the French star missed several significant scoring opportunities even when he wasn’t offside.
On Tuesday, Real Madrid quickly realized that playing through Atalanta’s man-marking defensive system would be difficult. Long balls over the top enabled Madrid to bypass the midfield entirely and score the opening goal, when Mbappé glided past Marten de Roon to put Los Blancos up 1-0. Real Madrid’s aim in the match was to get Bellingham, Mbappé, and Vini in as many one-on-one opportunities as possible to make up for Atalanta’s midfield control. Early on, this strategy worked. However, once Mbappé exited with an injury, Atalanta outshot Madrid 13-5 and controlled most of the match. The decisive goal from Bellingham came from a long ball played by Vini from his own half. Real Madrid had the individual quality to exploit Atalanta with long balls, but the fragility of the system was on full display.
You can see in the data how Real Madrid’s big three of Mbappé, Vinicius, and Bellingham have experienced either a stagnation or drop-off in their goal contributions this year.
Non-Penalty Goals + Assists Per 90 Minutes, 2023-24
Non-Penalty Goals + Assists Per 90 Minutes, 2024-25
It’s perhaps expected to see some regression from Bellingham, who last year posted a career outlier season in goal production. Vini has remained one of the top creative players in Europe. Some marginal decline from Mbappé could have been expected, because La Liga is a more challenging league than Ligue 1. But even despite Mbappé’s recent purple patch, this isn’t really “marginal decline”—this is a full nosedive that not even Mbappé’s biggest critics would have seen coming.
When Real Madrid went to Anfield a couple weeks ago to face Liverpool, Mbappé was barely a factor in the match. Los Blancos were totally unable to play out from the back against Liverpool’s relentless press. Mbappé at his peak was one of the best outlets in the game, because of the respect he commanded from opposing defenses. You could leave Mbappé on an island and he would still be one outlet pass, one creative dribble, one sprint away from creating a huge goal-scoring chance out of nothing.
Without Vinicius, Madrid tried to run its counterattacks through Mbappé. He didn’t attempt a shot from open play. Real Madrid won a penalty, only for Mbappé to miss it. He missed another penalty in a 2-1 loss to Athletic Bilbao on Dec. 4.
Mbappé doesn’t move around the pitch like the same supremely explosive athlete he was in 2022. He’s still fast, but he no longer appears superhuman to the eye. The human eye can be misleading, but he is doing less forward ball-carrying than he has in years past. Some of this is due to a role change (he is playing more often as a striker), but some of it could be marginal physical decline or lingering injury issues.
Real Madrid still has plenty of time to sort out these issues. Barcelona’s lead in La Liga is fragile, due to their defensive vulnerabilities, and they’ve won just one of their past five matches. Real Madrid has done the “Champions League comeback” story arc more times than I could even count. Nothing in this season has truly been decided yet.
There’s a certain right back at Liverpool who will be out of contract in June. Could Trent Alexander-Arnold be the solution as a deep-lying playmaker? This is not the first time the “what’s wrong with Real Madrid?” questions have been asked before even the turn of the new year. But it is the first time we’re all collectively asking what’s wrong with Kylian Mbappé.
