Kylian Mbappé: From Scapegoat to Superstar

Kylian Mbappé has rarely been more lethal. He has rarely been under more fire.

From Madrid to North America, his season has split in two: a storm at club level, a showcase at the World Cup. Same player, same numbers, completely different noise.

From saviour to scapegoat in Madrid

When Mbappé walked into Real Madrid on a free from Paris Saint-Germain in 2024, he arrived as the final piece. The superstar who would restore a dynasty. Eighty-six goals in 103 games later, the numbers scream success. The mood in Spain does not.

Madrid have not lifted a major trophy since he signed. For a club built on parades and podiums, that is a crisis, not a blip. Every failure in La Liga, every early exit in Europe, has sharpened the spotlight on the big names. Mbappé stands right in the middle of it.

He cannot simply have an average night. A quiet game is treated as an unforgivable one. What began as curiosity about his adaptation has hardened into hostility, each setback feeding the narrative that he has not changed Madrid’s fortunes.

The 2025-26 campaign laid that bare. Real fell away badly in the title race, watching Barcelona surge clear. Bayern Munich then pushed them out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals. Mbappé still broke the 40-goal barrier across the season, but in Madrid that felt like a footnote. His numbers were strong; the team’s season was not.

The pattern of his year did not help him. After a blistering first half, he faded. From mid-February to the end of the season, niggling injuries and a dip in sharpness left him with just four goals. When the pressure peaked, his influence waned.

Training ground flashpoint and a Sardinian storm

As Real’s season unravelled, the atmosphere around the club turned sour. Mbappé found himself right at the centre of it.

According to The Athletic, the tension spilled over before a league game against Real Betis in late April. In a training match, a member of the backroom staff flagged him offside. Mbappé reportedly responded with a volley of abuse. A small incident in isolation, but a telling snapshot of a dressing room on edge.

Then came the hamstring injury in the Betis match. Rather than stay at Valdebebas to work through his recovery, Mbappé took time off and flew to Sardinia with his girlfriend, Spanish actor Ester Expósito. Photographs of the pair on a yacht surfaced as Madrid faced Espanyol in La Liga.

The images landed badly. Inside the club, questions were asked. Outside, the reaction was furious. While coach Álvaro Arbeloa publicly defended his striker, an “Mbappé out” online petition exploded, collecting around 12 million signatures in under 24 hours and eventually surpassing 70 million. The backlash was no longer confined to pundits and columnists.

He then missed the Clásico in which Real effectively handed Barcelona the title, still deemed unfit and excusing himself from training with the potential substitutes due to “discomfort”. By the time he returned, it was from the bench against Real Oviedo in mid-May.

That, Mbappé felt, crossed a line.

“Fourth-choice striker” and a public rupture

Strikers rarely stop in the mixed zone when they have been benched. Mbappé did. After coming on as a substitute against Oviedo, he broke his usual silence and walked straight into the cameras.

He insisted he was “100 percent” fit and claimed he had not started because Arbeloa told him he had been relegated to “fourth-choice striker”. For a player of his stature, the phrase was incendiary.

Reports later suggested his anger was fuelled by the earlier sacking of Xabi Alonso, under whom he had felt more settled. Either way, the damage was done. Arbeloa, bombarded with questions, pushed back hard.

“He must have misunderstood me, at no point did I say he was the fourth-choice striker,” the coach said in his press conference. “A player who four days ago wasn’t even fit enough to make the bench for a match shouldn’t have started today.”

The Athletic described “growing disappointment” with Mbappé “from the dressing room to the board”. Trust was eroding. The club’s hierarchy and some team-mates were no longer simply defending their star; they were questioning him.

Mbappé’s camp responded with a statement of their own. They argued that “a portion of the criticism is based on an over-interpretation of elements related to a recovery period strictly supervised by the club, and does not reflect the reality of Kylian’s commitment and daily work for the team.”

The message was clear: he felt misrepresented, even betrayed, by the narrative building around him.

Escape to blue: Mbappé the France talisman

Then the World Cup arrived, and the volume in Madrid dropped. The noise around Mbappé did not disappear, but it changed pitch.

In North America, he has looked liberated. Focused. Dangerous. Away from the Bernabéu’s unforgiving gaze, he has gone back to basics: score, decide games, drag his country forward.

Eight goals so far. A tournament on fire.

He has rattled in three braces, against Senegal, Iraq and Sweden. He buried a winner from the penalty spot against Paraguay. He smashed in a stunning opener against Morocco in the quarter-finals. Even in the one group match where he did not score, against Norway, he still produced two assists.

That haul has pulled him level with Lionel Messi in a sparkling Golden Boot race. Across his World Cup career, he now sits on 20 goals, one behind Messi’s 21. The all-time record is suddenly within reach, whether in this tournament or the next.

In the dark blue of France, he looks at ease. In that shirt, there is no debate about his role. Didier Deschamps has attacking riches everywhere, but Mbappé is the undisputed reference point, the captain, the man the squad turns to.

His team-mates have rallied around him. On the eve of the World Cup, Ousmane Dembélé called the criticism of Mbappé “very, very unfair”.

“Some people go a bit too far with the criticism of Kylian,” Dembélé said. “He’s an incredible player and a very good person off the pitch. Some people overdo the criticism because he’s Kylian Mbappé. They shouldn’t keep going after him. Whether he ties his shoelaces or not, whether he pulls up his socks or not… it’s too much. He’s still a human being. With the France team, he’s very good with us, he’s a leader.”

Defender Lucas Hernandez echoed him: “Kylian is an extraordinary player. When you’re Kylian Mbappé, everyone looks at everything you do, on the pitch and off the pitch. All the criticism there has been this season, he’s going to silence it.”

Right now, Mbappé is doing exactly that.

Spain’s split verdict

Back in Spain, the verdict on Mbappé is not as simple as love or hate. It is more complicated, more conflicted.

On one side, there is his extraordinary output, his knack for deciding matches. On the other, lingering doubts about his leadership, his ego, his behaviour off the pitch. As a global superstar, he attracts scrutiny that most players will never know. In Spain, where football culture is unforgiving and the treatment of black players has often been questioned, that scrutiny can turn toxic fast.

“In Spain, we are famous for making stories out of the little that we see of players,” prominent journalist Guillem Balague told the BBC in May. “The jury remains out with Mbappé. He seems a little bit too cold and too distant with the Madrid fans – I remember Raúl telling me that one thing they appreciate is players running for the impossible ball. People love it.

“Of course, if Real were winning, it would be a different story. The question is, are they not winning because the managers haven’t been able to get the best out of Mbappé, or because he is not adapting quick enough? He went through a period when he first arrived of complete humbleness, realising he was at Real Madrid, and he was doing what he was told under Carlo Ancelotti.

“Then after missing two penalties, against Liverpool and Athletic Club, he was feeling really down and thought ‘I am going to do it my own way’. The goals started coming, and he was great numbers-wise for Ancelotti. But this season it simply hasn’t worked, under Alonso or Arbeloa.”

That is the fault line. Is Mbappé the victim of a dysfunctional Madrid, or the symbol of it?

A semi-final with history on the line

Now comes Spain again, but on neutral soil and on the biggest stage. A World Cup semi-final against the country where he lives, the league that questions him, the media that has turned him into a daily debate.

Mbappé knows exactly what is at stake.

“There is only one scenario where you can relax and that is winning the World Cup,” he said before the showdown. “When you play for France, if you don’t win, you get heavily criticised. We have a tightly-knit squad driving toward a single objective: victory.

“We are in the semi-finals, but the road is still long, and the most challenging matches lie ahead of us.”

He is level with Messi in the Golden Boot race. He is one goal off Messi’s all-time World Cup tally. He is carrying France towards another final. And he is fully aware that every touch against Spain will be replayed and re-judged back in Madrid.

Lucas Hernandez predicted that Mbappé would silence his critics. In North America, he has already turned down the volume. If he now knocks out the European champions and carries this form back into the club season, the question in Spain will not be whether he deserves an apology.

It will be who dares to offer it first.