It’s potentially the worst-kept secret in football right now. Kylian Mbappe is only a few months away from penning a deal with Real Madrid as a free agent, after informing Paris Saint-Germain earlier this season that he wouldn’t be extending his contract beyond this season. While we await formal communication from both the France captain and the 14-time UEFA Champions League winners, Soccer Laduma’s Kurt Buckerfield caught up with London-born Spanish football expert Sid Lowe, who is based in Madrid, to understand the feeling in the country’s capital ahead of Mbappe’s expected arrival. How will Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo Goes all fit into the same team? How will the dressing room be impacted? Lowe, author of the 2012 book Fear and Loathing in LALIGA: Barcelona vs Real Madrid, sets the scene.
On the questions surrounding Mbappe’s arrival…
The obvious thing, really, with Vinicius, Mbappe and Rodrygo, and it’s a recurring question, is where exactly do you put them? Because Real Madrid this season have already, I would say, had difficulties finding a natural place for Vinicius and Rodrygo because both of them prefer to play on the left. I say “on the left” but “on the left” is possibly not an entirely accurate way of putting it because they both play, of course, coming in from the left. So, their finishing point isn’t necessarily the left-hand side, but their starting point is the left-hand side. And they obviously do that in slightly different ways in that Vinicius is a bit more likely to go on the outside than diagonally, whereas Rodrygo is more likely to drifting inside thing. His movement is, I suppose, more horizontal than Vinicius. And then, of course, you’ve got Mbappe who plays as a forward, from the left as well. In terms of his movement and the spaces he occupies, I suppose there’s a combination of the two of them. Rodrygo has been open, which is unusual for a footballer I think, in saying he prefers to play from the left. And the reason I say it’s unusual is because when you start saying that it sounds like a complaint and managers tend not to like it. In Rodrygo’s case, saying that sounds like a challenge to Vinicius’ place and that’s obviously not always great. But I think it says something about the assuredness of the two of them, both Vinicius and Rodrygo, that Rodrygo feels like he can say that.
