Best player in the world?
It’s hard to imagine a more significant claim than Kylian Mbappe’s moment of genius for Paris Saint-Germain against Real Madrid in midweek.
It was the final minute of four added to what had been a goalless stalemate in the Champions League Round of 16 first leg clash.
The French World Cup winner was way out wide on the left when he picked up a nifty backheel from Neymar.
How he then bamboozles Lucas Vazquez and Eder Militao before sliding the ball through Thibaut Courtois’ legs has to be watched again. And again.
It’s all over in three seconds. There is a body swerve one way and then he bursts through.
The two defenders are like bewildered ghosts haunting the wrong house.
There’s the acceleration of a Bugatti Chiron while Clint Eastwood might have pulled the trigger.
If the execution was one thing; the context was another.
It was, you might say, payback time. Mbappe was repaying PSG for their faith when splashing €180 million on him as a teenager in 2017.
But it was also for refusing Real Madrid’s €200m offer for him knowing he can go for nothing at the end of the season.
Just as financially insane was Real’s willingness to spend €200m when they know they can get him for free.
That’s what can happen when giant egos with giant purses collide.
Sure enough, the clubs have broken off diplomatic relations. Besides the tug of war over Mbappe, they stand in opposite corners on the European Super League.
While Real president Florentino Perez led the attempted breakaway, it was PSG president Nasser Al-Khelifai who held firm when they were expected to join the rebels.
“Unlike Madrid, I value smaller clubs,” said Al-Khelaifi and for that he was appointed chairman of the European Clubs Association.
It’s a strange enmity. No one epitomised the sports-washing, nouveau riche more than Qatari-owned PSG, while Real are the undisputed kings of the establishment.
Yet the roles are reversed over the future of football.
Complicating the situation further, Mbappe wants to join Real, the club he supported as a boy, albeit at the end of his contract.
In Paris, he has unfinished business in leading PSG to a first Champions League triumph.
Despite countless attempts and a few near-misses, they’ve yet to break their duck despite the zillions of Qatari petrodollars that have been poured into the club.
Real Madrid have won it 13 times.
Mbappe knows he owes PSG big-time. He is the boy from the banlieu (wrong side of the tracks) made good in Paris and doesn’t want to let either his club or his origins down.
Many of his mates are PSG fans, after all.
His flirtation with Real has already led to a cooling towards him which seems to have made him more determined than ever to win the ultimate trophy in his last season.
He has been the club’s best player by a mile and that includes Lionel Messi and Neymar. And he was again against Real.
There was something of a swapping of the baton about the game with Messi missing a penalty and confined to the role of what the French call the facilitator.
Mbappe was the star who didn’t just turn Dani Carvajal inside out but had the whole Madrid defence quaking.
The Frenchman seems to have stolen a march on Erling Braut Haaland whose star has waned a little with injuries and his Borussia Dortmund side bowing out of the Champions League.
Mo Salah, too, has not quite maintained his coruscating form of the autumn and narrowly failed to win the Africa Nations Cup for Egypt.
Typically, he produced his usual goal on Wednesday and, not to be forgotten, Cristiano Ronaldo, now 37, reminded us of his existence by breaking his goal drought for Manchester United.
But right now, Mbappe, 23, would be most judges’ idea of the world’s best. Although he had a miserable Euros, missing the penalty that sent France out, he’s already bagged 22 goals for PSG as they seek to regain the French league title.
He is two years older than Haaland who also has the advantage in size (1.94m and 88kg to Mbappe’s 1.78 and 73kg).
But they are different players. If they were animals, Haaland would be a rhino to Mbappe’s cheetah.
Haaland couldn’t have scored that goal against Real – at least not in the same way: he might have done it but by raw power.
He prefers the bludgeon where Mbappe, although no shrinking violet, is sleeker and brings a feline speed and grace.
The Frenchman’s manic celebrations showed scant regard for the club he’s expected to join and just how badly he wants to win for PSG.
But for Real, a 1-0 reverse away from home is far from the end of the world. Indeed, seeing at first hand just what Mbappe will bring to the Bernabeu was ample compensation for the defeat.
Next season they’re pretty sure he’ll be theirs and he’s already the world’s best. Time is on their side and as the old saying goes, he who laughs last, laughs longest.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.