Kylian Mbappe is not like other players.
The first teenager to score in a World Cup final since Pele in 1958. The first player to score a hat-trick in one since Geoff Hurst in 1966. Ligue 1’s player of the year a record five seasons running, and the competition’s top scorer in the 21st century. Now 25, he was once the youngest player to reach the landmark totals of 10, 20, 30 and 40 Champions League goals.
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His play style is unique.
“Kylian does not need to be connected with the overall game,” wrote Mauricio Pochettino for The Athletic before the 2022 World Cup of a player who made 75 appearances under him at Paris Saint-Germain, scoring 67 goals.
“He can be there for five or even 10 minutes, not involved with his team, and then just appear, do something amazing, and win the match. If he doesn’t touch the ball, he’s relaxed. He knows that when the ball reaches him, he is still going to beat his opponent.”
Mbappe has openly wanted a move to Real Madrid for years, and now it is finally done. Beyond fulfilling a dream, this transfer makes sense tactically, stylistically and for Madrid’s next generation.
But there is another big reason why the switch suits him right now: Mbappe will be playing under Carlo Ancelotti.
The Italian is the only head coach to win all of Europe’s top five domestic leagues, and has more Champions League trophies (five) than any other coach. He is rarely credited as an elite tactician — instead more often regarded as the ultimate players’ coach — but he definitely is one.
Ancelotti is more versatile than he gets credit for — and so too, for that matter, is Mbappe.
Ancelotti has repeatedly found unique solutions to accommodate superstars. At AC Milan, there were three spots for four elite midfielders: Andrea Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf, Rui Costa and Kaka. In his book, Quiet Leadership, Ancelotti says: “We came up with the diamond, where Pirlo and Kaka exchanged places: Pirlo deeper and Kaka more forward. That 4-4-2 diamond system turned Kaka into the World Player of the Year.”
Kaka is one of four Ballon d’Or winners to have claimed the prize with Ancelotti as their manager, the most of any coach. At Milan, the Brazilian won in 2007 and Andriy Shevchenko in 2004. Cristiano Ronaldo (he won two of his five under Ancelotti, in 2013 and 2014) and Karim Benzema (2022), are the other two, both at Real Madrid. Mbappe, a top-10 finisher every year it’s been awarded since 2017 (there was no Ballon d’Or in 2020 because of the pandemic) and third last time, is yet to win the prize.
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At Juventus, Ancelotti said he “tailor-made the side” for Zinedine Zidane, as the Frenchman “changed the way I looked at football”. Mbappe is a similarly transformative player and his move to Madrid brings another parallel between his career and Zidane’s, beyond helping France win a World Cup.
“You can play football in different ways,” said Ancelotti in 2020. “There is no one winning system. I think the winning system is to put the players on the pitch (where they are) comfortable.”
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This outlook serves as something of a contrast with PSG head coach Luis Enrique, appointed last summer and trying to implement a style resembling his iconic Barcelona side. Mbappe scored 33 per cent of PSG’s league goals last season (27 of 81), one every 80 minutes. Only in 2018-19 (71 minutes per goal) has he scored more often at PSG. As good as the numbers are, it often felt that he scored those goals despite Luis Enrique’s tactics and system rather than because of them — his average shot distance was the highest in his career.
Luis Enrique’s system and Mbappe did not prove a marriage of convenience.
The Spaniard tried playing him off the left, as a No 10 and at No 9 in the 4-3-3. There was a 4-3-1-2 with Mbappe and Bradley Barcola as split strikers in the Champions League. Luis Enrique also tried Mbappe and Randal Kolo Muani as a strike partnership in Europe. But the manager never quite found the perfect setup — plenty of different ways worked in one-off games, just not consistently — to get Mbappe and the system in harmony.
Mbappe’s low-touch nature and limited defensive contributions at times looked at odds with Luis Enrique’s desire for possession, pressing and control. Mbappe, as Pochettino says, is a ‘moments’ player who thrives in chaos. He is too good to leave out, but not the profile Luis Enrique would hand-pick.
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PSG players have six Ligue 1 hat-tricks this decade — Mbappe scored all but one of them. His fourth came in November’s 3-0 away win against Reims, who PSG drew twice with the previous season. He won the game in his own laissez-faire way, with three one-touch finishes.
The first was an important early goal to break open a stubborn back five, illustrated below. PSG go winger to winger, as Ousmane Dembele dribbles on the outside and crosses to Mbappe, who side-foots a volley into the far corner.
The second: a flowing back-to-front passing move starting from the goalkeeper. Mbappe’s only touch in the sequence is the scoring one, but he makes a fantastic double movement as team-mate Carlos Soler is slid through. First, he makes the run inside Reims centre-back Joseph Okumu.
Then when Okumu moves to try to get tight, he switches and attacks between the posts, where he taps in Soler’s low cross.
PSG sealed the game late on with a counter-attack from deep. Once more, Mbappe’s smart positioning is on show, moving inside then standing still in the box to find space, and sweeping a Barcola cutback into the far corner.
“I ask for more from Mbappe,” said Luis Enrique afterwards. “Not in terms of goals; I ask for more in supporting the rest of the team and participating in more situations. I think he is one of the best players in the world, without any doubt, but we still need to see a better Kylian.”
This was the crux of it. Match-winner Mbappe had the fewest touches of any starting PSG outfielder. Even so, he accounted for half of PSG’s touches in the Reims penalty area (13 of 26) and took nine of their 14 shots. Mbappe received the most progressive passes (14) and had the joint-most progressive carries (six) but did not make a tackle or interception.
It is why he is often misprofiled as selfish, though part of the reason he attacks this way is the dynamics of Ligue 1.
As it is a league dominated by young players, presses and counter-presses can be less co-ordinated, while defenders are less experienced, which gives more time, space and incentive to dribble — every season since 2018-19, Ligue 1 comes out with the most dribbles.
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To see how Mbappe might fit in at Madrid, it’s helpful to look at what happened when two Barcelona players came to PSG.
In the 136 games Mbappe played with Neymar, the two combined for 54 goals. He was even better with Lionel Messi — together they scored 34 times, where one assisted the other, in 67 games. They are Mbappe’s top two team-mates for that metric in his career.
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The bigger tactical picture is the defensive issues PSG had playing a 3-4-3 with Mbappe, Neymar and Messi all up front. The three attackers did very little defending — but Mbappe thrived. In 2021-22, he became the first player in Ligue 1 history to score the most goals (28) and produce the most assists (17) in a season. The freedom to interchange positions with Messi and Neymar, play close together to combine, deliver and receive through balls, was devastating.
Mbappe is not just a quick, right-footed left-winger. His career started on the right at Monaco and for France, scoring mostly through one-touch finishes from crosses, and off rebounds. There are justified questions over him and Vinicius Junior attacking similar parts of the pitch, plus the repercussions for Jude Bellingham’s box-crashing role. But history suggests Mbappe and Ancelotti will figure that out.
“There are two types of managers: those that do nothing and those that do a lot of damage,” said Ancelotti before Madrid’s Champions League semi-final second leg with Bayern Munich in May. “The game belongs to the players.”
Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and Luis Enrique, in three different ways, have won the Champions League with highly structured teams that oppose Ancelotti’s sentiment. He and Mbappe both are outliers in modern European football; they see and play the game with more flexibility, ingenuity and spontaneity. Bellingham has praised the freedom Ancelotti offers. The “damage” that Ancelotti references might be specific to the fact he has often worked with superstars and therefore does not need to compensate for their tactical, psychological or physical inferiority with smart tactical plans.
PSG’s structured approach has suited the team overall even if at Mbappe’s expense, partly because of the youth of the squad.
Luis Enrique inherited a team with a poor recent European record, and one that had not scored over 100 goals or recorded more than 90 points domestically since 2018-19, and had a declining defence (by PSG’s standards). They drew too many times last season in Ligue 1 (10) but surpassed most expectations in reaching the Champions League semi-finals, going unbeaten away in the top flight, and winning the Coupe de France to seal a domestic treble — their first in four years. If anything, it highlights Ancelotti’s novelty in liking, and wanting, superstars.
Mbappe’s arrival in Madrid would suit a 4-2-3-1, and not just because this is how Didier Deschamps sets up France’s national team.
It would certainly suit Luka Modric to be in a deeper role, where he can spray passes with reduced physical demands, while keeping Bellingham in the No 10 role. It is take your pick for how Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo line up, but Madrid’s clear midfield structure (with Eduardo Camavinga and/or Aurelien Tchouameni likely to step into the departed Toni Kroos’ role) would help facilitate an attacking system with freedom to move across the pitch, either in deliberate rotations to make them difficult to mark, or to play close together for angles to combine against compact defences (and counter-press if they lose the ball).
Factor in the youth of Madrid’s forwards, and the long-term success prospects for the 15-time European champions are borderline ridiculous. There is a potential starting XI for next season here:
At 25, Mbappe is older than Vinicius Jr (23), Bellingham (20) and Rodrygo (also 23). Then there is 21-year-old Camavinga and 24-year-old Tchouameni, who joined Madrid from Rennes and Monaco respectively in 2021 and 2022. Like Mbappe, they underline the tactically versatile nature of the next French generation; Camavinga has played left-back and central midfield for Madrid, while Tchouameni has recently filled in at centre-back but primarily plays defensive midfield.
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Benzema’s departure last summer demanded a restructuring of the Madrid attack, handled expertly by Ancelotti and his coaching staff, while the Frenchman’s late career peak was catalysed by Cristiano Ronaldo moving to Juventus in 2018.
Transfers are often about timing, and while Mbappe will say this move was inevitable, it actually makes sense now.
Ancelotti agreed a new contract until summer 2026 in December, and is the exact coach he needs.
(Top photo: Glenn Gervot/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)