Kylian Mbappé was 13 the first time he trained with Real Madrid and 25 the second. Now, at last, he can play for them. And while this was a chronicle foretold and retold, over and over again for so long, much as he said “I knew this was my destiny” and everyone else knew it was, however inevitable it had always seemed, tedious at times too, it still felt a bit weird when he turned up at Valdebebas again last week. He was actually here. On Thursday, La Liga 2024-25 begins; one way or the other, it will always be his, even if it turns out not to be.
This has taken long enough. “I was close two years ago, three years ago,” Mbappé said. And the rest. Invited to train with Madrid in 2012, a kid but not just a kid, he had been driven by Zinedine Zidane to the club’s training pitches, asking if he should take his shoes off in the car. He met Cristiano Ronaldo, whose posters covered his bedroom wall, and took a picture of his own. You’ll have seen the images of him gazing up at them many times. While in Paris he even published a book called My Name is Kylian, which told the story of a boy visited by Ronaldo and Zidane in dreams coloured white. Subtle, it was not.
