You can’t just turn up on the first day and say: “hey you, pass me the ball,” Kylian Mbappé insisted, but that was then and this was now. And now he did almost exactly that, going around the pitch asking everybody where it was until someone said here and off he went, heading up the tunnel with it under his arm. It was still there 45 minutes later when he left the Estadio José Zorrilla on Saturday, messages from his teammates scrawled all over the yellow leather in black marker, dedicated to the man who had just led Real Madrid to a 3-0 victory over Real Valladolid: “Crack” – Fede Valverde. “Pressing Monster” – Luka Modric. “Congrats, my nine” – Jude Bellingham. And: “Ooh la la, brother” – Brahim Díaz.
“Grande, straight to Paris,” Rodrygo wrote. Instead, they were on their way back to Barajas, a 20-minute flight south. One former La Liga player carries a needle in his wallet after finding out the hard way that you can’t fly with an inflated ball on board but there are always exceptions and when Madrid embarked not long after midnight they were top, four points ahead of Atlético Madrid, temporarily 10 ahead of Barcelona. As for Mbappé, he was now Europe’s best striker this year, his eighth goal in 2025 having just completed a first hat-trick since arriving in Spain. “Here’s to many more, Kiki,” Fran García wrote, and no one doubts there will be.
