Mbappe has made Real Madrid the new PSG

Robin Bairner

• 9 Apr 2025 06:30 CDT
• 4 min read

Analysis

Real Madrid have proven with Kylian Mbappe that you can take the boy out of PSG, but you’ll never take the PSG out of the boy.

Definitive proof of this fact arrived on Tuesday evening at the Emirates Stadium as Carlo Ancelotti’s side submitted meekly to a 3-0 loss against Arsenal.

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Kylian Mbappé

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Kylian Mbappé

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Real Madrid

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It was not so much the defeat itself that was the problem; it was the manner in which it arrived.

Real Madrid, a side so synonymous with Champions League success in recent seasons, turned for one night into PSG, a team that has been haunted by persistent underperformance on Europe’s biggest stage.

And it is Mbappe, a summer signing from PSG, who best epitomises this fact. The 26-year-old failed to record a single defensive action of any kind at the Emirates Stadium. Not a single loose ball won, aerial duel attempted or tackle missed. Nothing.

It was a performance that harked back to the bad old days of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Mbappe at Parc des Princes, when there was not even a pretence of doing any defensive work.

The disease that Mbappe has carried from France seems to have spread to the rest of the team.

Arsenal outworked their guests by an enormous margin of 12km in total, while not a single Real Madrid player ran more than 10km, according to Relevo.

Los Blancos were not run into the ground; they simply accepted their fate.

Mbappe leading an ill-conceived project

Of course, all of this alone cannot be pinned on Mbappe, a player who has grown used to those around him doing the work.

While fingers are naturally pointed at head coach Carlo Ancelotti, questions, too, must be asked of the Real Madrid management and how they managed to get themselves into a situation in which so many luxury players have been packed into one team.

Mbappe may be the most egregious example, but Vini Jr and even Jude Bellingham are hardly workhorses.

Throw in a defensive injury crisis, too, and there was the making of a perfect storm against an Arsenal side that was carried by the unlikely wave of a Declan Rice double.

It’s normally the Real Madrid support that gets the white handkerchiefs – the infamous panuelos blancos - out as a form of disapproval, but in North London it was their stars waving the white flag of surrender.

We’ve seen it with Mbappe’s PSG in the past, but this was a first in the modern era for Real Madrid and sends an alarming message that change is needed.