Mbappé to Madrid: Bond stretches back years

It’s not uncommon for soccer players just arriving at a club to claim they have always dreamed of playing for their new club.

But it is unusual for new signings to talk of feeling such love if they have regularly scored important goals against their new club, while regularly turning down public offers to come and play for it.

“I’ve dreamed for many years of playing for Real Madrid,” Kylian Mbappé said to a crowd of 80,000 in the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium last month. “I want to especially thank all the ‘Madridistas,’ because for many years they have given me a lot of affection, a lot of love, which went straight to my heart.”

In this case, the message made sense. The story of Mbappé growing up as a Madrid fan and idolizing former galacticos Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo is already part of Bernabeu folklore. He began learning Spanish as a teenager so that he would be ready for his move to Madrid. Many in the Spanish capital viewed him as one of their own long before he arrived after his exit from Paris St.-Germain. As Madrid begins its La Liga season Sunday, Mbappé is finally in the fold.

On the morning of his presentation to the fans, Mbappé visited Madrid’s training ground to greet his new coach, Carlo Ancelotti, and sign his contract with President Florentino Perez in the club’s offices. The ultramodern facilities at Valdebebas, on the outskirts of Madrid, have changed a lot since his first visit in December 2012.

Back then, Real Madrid pulled out all the stops to impress Mbappé, who turned 14 that week. Zidane, then an adviser to Perez without a formal role after his legendary playing career, chaperoned him throughout. Mbappé also had his first taste of the Bernabeu atmosphere that week, with Zidane hosting him and his family for a league game against Espanyol.

It seemed like fate even then. As an 8-year-old, he had received a model of the stadium as a gift. “One day I’ll take you all to Real Madrid, and we’ll sit in the VIP seats,” Mbappé told his parents that Christmas.

Zidane introduced Mbappé to Ronaldo after the game. A photo of the meeting was soon proudly displayed in his bedroom in the Parisian suburb of Bondy.

But the summer after Mbappé visited the Spanish capital, he turned down an offer from Madrid, entering Monaco’s youth system instead. “I wasn’t ready to go abroad and leave my friends and my country behind,” he later told Le Parisien.

In the summer of 2017, when Mbappé was still just 18, Madrid and Monaco’s hierarchy agreed to a transfer. But Mbappé instead decided to join PSG. As luck would have it, Madrid and PSG were then drawn together in the next season’s Champions League round of 16. That meant Mbappé’s first taste of playing at the Bernabeu came against the team of his dreams, in February 2018.

Mbappé won the World Cup with France that summer, and for a while, he seemed fully focused on PSG.

But nobody in Madrid had forgotten about him.

PSG and Madrid were drawn together again in the 2019-20 Champions League group stage. When the lineups were read before kickoff at the Bernabeu, Madrid fans cheered Mbappé’s name. When he scored, the crowd chanted, “Sign him now.”

The conversations before and after the game were about how Madrid could get Mbappé to join. One story that week in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo claimed an agreement was already in place for him to run down his PSG contract and join Madrid on a free transfer in the summer of 2022.

A free transfer for Mbappé remained the most likely outcome, even after another offer from Madrid in 2021, given that PSG did not seem to be interested in selling.

That all added to the drama when Madrid and PSG were again drawn together in the Champions League round of 16 in February 2022. Mbappé had four months left on his PSG deal, and confidence was high around the Bernabeu that he would soon be theirs.

When Mbappé scored in Madrid, the crowd watched in silence. But Madrid came back to take the tie and knock PSG and its young star out of the competition.

Most in Madrid believed it was now even more likely that Mbappé would soon join their squad. When he appeared again in the Spanish capital soon thereafter, for a visit with his PSG teammate Achraf Hakimi, details were breathlessly reported by the Madrid-supporting media. Mbappé himself announced his presence in the city on social media — widely taken as a hint that he would soon be living there permanently.

So, the disappointment was greater just a few weeks later, when PSG announced that Mbappé had agreed to a new contract to stay with the French team.

In January, when it emerged that he would leave when his contract ended this past June, the extreme focus on everything Mbappé returned to the Bernabeu. But the extent of their shared connection became clear only during Mbappé’s July presentation.

He entered the Bernabeu’s shiny new press room beaming that day, while clutching the model of the stadium he had received as a kid almost two decades ago.

“I was under a lot of pressure this morning when I woke up,” he said in excellent Spanish. “I thought I must enjoy every second, if my nerves allowed me. The passion and love the fans have shown me is unbelievable. I feel like an adopted member of this family.”

Many new players make emotional statements on their first days at a new club, but the bond between Mbappé and Madrid has existed for more than a decade.