Towards the end of last season, the sight of Kylian Mbappé leaving Real Madrid’s training base Valdebebas while laughing was enough to send sections of the capital club’s media into a tail spin.
On May 7, the forward was pictured cracking a smile in his car the same day that his teammates Federico Valderde and Aurélien Tchouaméni had gotten into a now infamous bust-up, resulting in the former needing to be sent to hospital. It was the nadir of a desperately poor season by Madrid standards, and was Mbappé was deemed to be not taking things seriously.
