COLUMN: Let’s stop deluding ourselves about Real Madrid

As successive nadapletes loom for a club so addicted to titles, Madridistas were rankled further when Kylian Mbappe – who has been managing a troublesome knee injury for most of the season – was spotted on vacation in Italy with his girlfriend, the actress Ester Exposito. A PR nightmare has ensued: the optics of Mbappe disconnecting from Real Madrid look bad when set against the backdrop (however optimistic) of Vinicius, Jude Bellingham and Fede Valverde trying to pull off a genuine miracle in La Liga’s title race.

“Every player does what they want in their free time, but we didn’t build Real Madrid with players who go out dressed in tuxedos,” interim boss Alvaro Arbeloa said in words that may well serve as a warning. “Real Madrid was built with players whose shirts end up covered in mud, sweat and effort.”

It has been a tumultuous season at Real Madrid that has laid bare a few truths about the squad and how it was built. No, Real Madrid don’t have enough defensive depth, and yes, Florentino Perez whiffed badly in failing to add an organizer to a physical midfield that really needs one.

But perhaps the singular truth that this Real Madrid season has revealed is that Vinicius and Mbappe cannot coexist. The team functions differently, if not better, when Vinicius is its star – and if Perez has the gumption to do so, he should stop the bleeding by selling Mbappe this summer.

No player in LaLiga has scored more than Mbappe’s 55 goals since the start of last season. He will become the first Madrid player in 11 years – and only the second this century – to win consecutive Pichichis as the league’s top scorer. In exactly 100 games for Real Madrid, Mbappe has bagged an impressive 85 goals. Individually, he has been everything that Perez hoped he would be after the longtime president finally secured his signature in 2024 after years of intense interest.

But the goal tally is part of the problem. Increasingly, Mbappe is becoming a footballing anachronism: a player who does not run for the team or participate at all in the collective out-of-possession structure. Everyone has seen the viral clip of a frustrated Luis Enrique practically begging Mbappe to press Pau Cubarsi in a film session during the 2024 Champions League quarterfinals; it turns out that problem wasn’t exclusive to Lucho and PSG, who won last season’s Champions League and look a strong bet to do it again later this month.

“All the teams run more than us. We need to run more, (with better) pressing and defending,” Arbeloa admitted after the Espanyol match. “Talent alone is not enough.”

Moreover, Mbappe’s lack of discretion relative to his Italian holiday doesn’t appear to have gone down well with his teammates back in Spain. Bellingham’s Instagram Stories after Sunday’s match paint a fairly clear picture of which side the England international is on. It’s a reaction that can only happen in a fractured dressing room; Alvaro Carreras went viral for his laughter when Fran Garcia was chosen to replace the injured Ferland Mendy on Sunday instead of him. And seeing as the eagerly-awaited Clasico rematch takes place next Sunday, it’s worth remembering that Xabi Alonso’s death knell came when Vinicius threw a tantrum following his substitution in October’s league Clasico. Does this sound like a healthy dressing room to you?

Let’s stop deluding ourselves that the Mbappe-Real Madrid experiment is going to work. This team needed an unprecedented penalty shootout decision even to reach the last eight of last season’s Champions League, 10 months before it chased Alonso out of the dugout and into a sabbatical. The response to Alonso’s dismissal? A humiliating cup defeat to Albacete in Arbeloa’s first game as the coach back in January, and a scarcely-competitive title race against Hansi Flick’s brilliant but flawed Barcelona.

The holes that need patching don’t have everything to do with Mbappe, but he is the most visible and obvious symbol of Madrid’s decadence. On one side of the city, Atletico are preparing to face Arsenal in a Champions League semifinal; on the other, an identity crisis has taken hold, with no easy fix.

Except maybe there is: cutting ties with Mbappe, surely against the wishes of Javier Tebas but an idea with a growing number of Madridistas behind it.