Because it gives a short boost in confidence. It's a trigger used in various other sports as well. You give players a good cheap boost to get them to feel more confident. With individual competitions you target soft opponents, with other sports you put the player in the easiest position to succeed. It's the same thing. In races you target easier courses, etc.
About to have a much bigger star in Zidane manage him. Interesting to see how he adapts to becoming second fiddle. Zidane is a great man manager though. But, if he tries the nonsense such as Sweden, Zidane will torch him.
Doesn't Deschamps step down in 2026? Who knows what happens until then, you make it sound like next week.
It’s the same logic in basketball if you’re having a bad shooting game. You wanna drive to the basket to get fouled and get some free throws to regain some rythm back.
Is it just me or does he still just seem much more regular than we thought he'd be. The talent is there but the end product is missing.
He doesn't look like one of the best players in the world let alone the best....Vinnie and Jude look on another level,players like Salah ,Yamal etc as well He can still score and make a good run from time to time because he is Mbappe but his overall game is completely missing.....he makes me appreciate Benzema more...the skills Karim had were far superior
I'm still hopeful but yea its odd seeing him play 2nd and sometimes 3rd fiddle out there to Jude and Vini.
Unbelievable comments. Sometimes I wonder if people watch the games with their eyes or their arse. He was 100x better than Vini for a good month now because Vini is on his clown show streak. He’s been playing well. Vini screwing around out there is putting him out of rhythm. No idea what the hell Vini is going to do so he (and everyone else) is forced to react. What a shitshow from that Brazilian diva. That guy has been a selfish prick lately.
Mbappe just isn't on the same level as he was in PSG, Monaco or France. He's past his prime. Simple as that. I knew this would happen. The pressure and the heat he's getting in Madrid is abnormal and many players simply just can't handle it and Mbappe is one of them. Being successful in Real doesn't mean just having all the talent in the world but also to be mentally strong, which Mbappe clearly isn't.
He may have had 1 or 2 matches where he was a bit better than Vini but being 100x is a hilarious statement.
He's playing like sh*t? They're playing him out of position. Mbappe has the wing all to himself? He has a physical issue. He's out clubbing in Sweden? Ah, he has played too many games this year. Also, he's depressed and Vini is acting like a diva so Mbappe can't play well. Oh brother.
The bar is in hell for him due to his poor start so anything remotely average is met with lavish praise for doing the bare minimum if that. At this point he’s…just kinda there.
Clearly any kind of logical discussion around this topic is impossible at this point when a player that is safely projected to have scored and assisted for us in the double digits is considered to be "just there".
Before we signed him, my friend asked me what I would classify as a good year for Mbappe. I said 30 goals is a minimum for his first year. Ideally, we're paying for someone who will consistently score 35-40 goals a year. We're halfway through the season and he's on 14. Can't say I have faith he'll get to 30. But I can see him get 10 goals. I feel like he'll end up with 25 which isn't bad but way way off what many were hoping to get when we first wanted to sign him.
I reckon he'd get that since he's slowly gaining form, so is the team. Though a player of his profile shouldn't be judged by goals alone. He's a multi-faceted forward and isn't a pure striker. He should affect the game beyond the box. By that metric it should be goals + eye test.
I don't understand how you are shocked that people expected more from Mbappe than just minimum decent stats. Given his stature and history, people saw a new R9 or Cristiano when he comes to Madrid. That means dazzling the crowd, magic moments, in brief making the team better through his overall play and not just goals. It means also working hard, being a leadership figure etc. People expected for him to massively increase the fear factor, to be a reference point of this team. Essentially he was supposed to be the complete forward. If we just wanted someone to finish and have nice stats, Joselu could have done the job too.
If Joselu could have done it, he wouldn't have to pay tickets as a fan to watch Champions LEague games while he was playing in Germany.
I anticipated you would get hooked at the Joselu remark and not the 99 percent of what was the substance of the post. Joselu or whoever else, Mbappe has barely any value over replacement player as they say in basketball.
He's currently the third best attacking player on a team that has the best and second best attacking players in the world (Vinicius and Bellingham, depending on how you rank them). For all the hooting and hollering about Mbappe, we basically paid as much for him as we did for Rodrygo and Endrick together and at the end of the day, they'll most likely not turn out to be anywhere near him individually or even together. All those close but not quite players add up as well.