Mbappe's career has GOAT potential with second World Cup win

Robin Bairner

• Updated: 23 May 2023 09:00 CDT
• 4 min read

Kylian Mbappe will elevate himself to a level among football’s all-time greats should France beat Argentina on Sunday to win the 2022 World Cup.

Les Bleus are aiming to become the first team in 60 years to defend the trophy, and if they achieve this, Mbappe has the potential to lift himself into the conversation to be the greatest of all time.

Make no mistake, at 23, he has not achieved enough in his career to yet be considered among the undisputed greats of the game such as Pele, Diego Maradona, Cristiano Ronaldo and, of course, Lionel Messi. But with a decade or more remaining at the top level, the PSG striker has made a flying start.

Kylian Mbappe: Goals, assists, results & fixtures in 2022-23

Messi and Ronaldo are the modern yardstick by which the great players are compared. Since they broke onto the scene, no-one has come close... until Mbappe. The France international is ahead of both in terms of goals at this juncture of his career. Indeed, he has scored more than twice as many goals as Ronaldo had at the same age.

Both the Argentine and the Portuguese had a Ballon d’Or in their pockets by the time they turned 24, something that Mbappe cannot achieve, but the prospect of playing a vital role in a second World Cup triumph goes some way to balancing that out.

Indeed, having become the first teenager since Pele to score in a World Cup final when he netted against Croatia in Russia four years ago, Mbappe has the potential to break records at a pace familiar to the two greats. He already has PSG’s record scorer, Edinson Cavani, within his sights and is comfortably in France’s 10 leading scorers of all time, having overtaken Zinedine Zidane during Qatar 2022.

It is important to remember that at this stage he simply has GOAT potential - there is no guarantee that he will achieve it or even come close to it. Injury or personal circumstances could easily derail him, such is the knife edge along which professional players work.

World Cup 2022 most assists

What Mbappe must do to be considered the GOAT

Certainly, if he wants to claim this title, it likely means a move to the Premier League. Scoring goals freely in Ligue 1 just won’t cut it to be considered among the best ever, and La Liga has lost some of its lustre since the heyday of the Messi and Ronaldo rivalry. It has to be in England that Mbappe writes his legacy at club level.

So what does he need to do in order to be considered up there with the best?

Quite simply, he needs to keep scoring goals at the rate he is presently doing so, lead his teams to armfuls of glory and pick up several Ballons d’Or along the way. An iconic moment or two, of course, would help.

It’s a big ask, but if Mbappe can do this for the next decade, he will find himself in the GOAT conversation along with Messi and Ronaldo.