“Good afternoon everyone. I’m going to try to speak Spanish.” Unsurprisingly for a transfer that has been more than a decade in the making, Kylian Mbappé came prepared. It was at Monaco – not long after he had been charmed by Zinedine Zidane on a visit to Real Madrid’s training ground just before his 14th birthday – that the talented teenager had started taking Spanish lessons in anticipation of this moment. And now, finally, it had arrived.
“It’s such an incredible feeling to be here, just incredible,” said Mbappé after he was eventually introduced at a packed Santiago Bernabéu stadium on Tuesday by Florentino Pérez. “I spent endless nights dreaming about one day playing for Real Madrid, and today I’m one happy guy.”
