Missed penalties and ‘underwhelming performance’: What’s going wrong for Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid?

By Matias Grez, CNN

(CNN) — Some call it confidence; others would say it’s arrogance, but the way Kylian Mbappé has always strutted around the pitch and the unerring self-belief he so evidently possesses have played a huge part in his success as a player and marketability as an athlete.

Whether for AS Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain or France, Mbappé has always thrived in the most intense moments of pressure, be that a hat-trick in a World Cup final or winning goals in the Champions League.

The Frenchman’s protracted move to Real Madrid, then, seemed like the perfect marriage: the superstar player joining the glitzy behemoth, the club he had dreamed of playing for since he was a boy.

But the first few months following the union have been rocky, it’s fair to say, even if some early talk of a crisis is well wide of the mark.

Mbappé’s 11 goals and two assists in 21 games across all competitions so far this season is certainly not a bad return for a forward settling into his new club – but Mbappé isn’t just any player, and Real Madrid is not just any club.

The nadir of his start to life in Madrid came only last week, when Mbappé missed two costly penalties in the space of seven days in defeats to Liverpool and Athletic Bilbao.

“A big mistake in a match where every detail counts,” Mbappé wrote on an Instagram story after the Athletic defeat. “I take full responsibility for it.

“A difficult moment but it’s the best time to change this situation and show who I am.”

The 25-year-old helped to alleviate some of the early pressure on his shoulders by scoring the third goal in Real’s 3-0 win over Girona in La Liga on Saturday, but Mbappé is still some way off the lofty standards he has previously set for himself.

“The defining feature of those opening months has been a general feeling of underwhelming performances,” Football España editor Ruairidh Barlow tells CNN Sport. “I think Mbappé has been given a lot of backing from the team. I think he’s been given a lot of support from the club. The fans even have tried to rally him a little bit.

“But what Mbappé has been missing more than anything else, apart from goals and performances, is that character of somebody who’s been one of the best players in the world for a long time, somebody who’s won World Cups, somebody who scored a hat-trick in the World Cup final when his team really needed it.

“So that kind of character, that kind of star power, the leader that this team wanted him to be, has not really appeared so far. And even though his goal record is not that bad for striker – even if it’s maybe not perhaps where he’d want it to be – the constant feeling has been that when the big moments have come up, or when they most needed him, Mbappé has not really been able to produce.”

Barlow says the last month or two have “spiraled into kind of a crisis of confidence” for Mbappé.

Mbappé’s struggles are Real’s struggles

But the French star’s struggles are not unique at Real Madrid this season. Across the pitch, players have been performing below their best, namely Jude Bellingham and Aurélien Tchouaméni, while the team overall often looks disjointed and toothless.

At the Santiago Bernabéu, Real’s famous home, the team has already lost as many games as it did during the whole of last season.

Carlo Ancelotti, Real’s head coach, recently acknowledged that Mbappé’s teething issues are just part of a collective problem the team is suffering.

The downturn in form of Bellingham and Tchouaméni, two crucial cogs in the midfield, has particularly exacerbated the struggles of Los Merengues.

“Real Madrid are struggling to essentially link their midfield and their attack,” Barlow explains. “You saw that against Athletic, where they just could not play their way through midfield, so they were reduced to long balls, which is not Mbappé’s strength, obviously.”

Ancelotti has attempted to tinker with his front line, which has been partly forced by Vinícius Jr.’s recent injury, though it has returned mixed results.

Mbappé has played centrally in Real’s attack as more of a traditional No. 9, as well as briefly out wide on the left. Neither yielded much of an improvement, which Barlow partly attributes to Los Blancos missing a central striker this season.

“When Mbappé was playing through the middle and essentially asked to do a lot of stuff with his back to goal, he was struggling to really do that because, frankly, it’s not his game,” Barlow added.

“Then there were three games where he was moved out to the left-hand side and that didn’t really see an improvement in my view, essentially because Real Madrid don’t have a No. 9 at all in the squad … so you’re seeing him play in a role that’s not particularly suited to him.

“They lack the profiles that you want in a side and you saw that last season. Whenever Real Madrid were in trouble, they threw Joselu on. He was actually an underrated, really big part of their side.

“For the French national team, too, Mbappé was always demanding, essentially, that (Olivier) Giroud played because that allowed him to play off that big target man, that No. 9 figure.”

However, there was one spell this season that will give Mbappé and Real Madrid fans the confidence that he can recapture his best form. After not registering a goal in his opening three La Liga matches, Mbappé went on a run of scoring six goals in five games in La Liga and the Champions League.

Though the goals have dried up since – registering just four in his last 12 games – Real won all five of those matches, further emphasizing just how important a fully-firing Mbappé will be to this team.

“He was probably one of Real Madrid’s best players then,” Barlow says. “He was playing through the middle still, but slanting out to left.

“Vinícius and him would interchange, and I think that’s probably what Ancelotti will end up looking for, is that there will be a fairly fluid relationship between the center and the left-hand side with Vinícius and Mbappé, and it’s about making sure that works.”

Where has the swagger gone?

Even when playing alongside Lionel Messi and Neymar at PSG, Mbappé was unequivocally always the star man. It wasn’t much after his France debut, too, that it became obvious he was also the star of the national team.

Arriving at Real, however, Mbappé would for the first time be playing second fiddle. Los Blancos already had their own superstar: Vinícius Jr.

Mbappé’s body language has at times projected doubt; shoulders slumped and head bowed, a far cry from the supreme confidence he swaggered around the pitch with in Paris.

But he was always the player every person at the club, from the Qatari owners to fans, looked to as he attempted to lead PSG to the promised land of a Champions League trophy.

At Real Madrid, he arrived at a team that “doesn’t ‘need’ him, in inverted commas,” Barlow says, given the team won La Liga and the Champions League last season. “The players know they’re good enough without him.”

“I think the idea was that Mbappé comes in, he’s low profile, he works hard, he does his job, he goes home,” Barlow adds. “But that has maybe played into that lack of character (he’s shown at Real).

“Mbappé probably needs to be the star man at this point, he needs his ego to be fed – not in a bad way, all star players do – but that maybe hindered him a little bit. That’s the spiral of confidence now where you see a player that is less certain of himself, is missing chances that he would have taken in the past.

“Essentially, a lot of the bases, a lot of the certainties for him have been taken away in terms of being a star player, the player that people look to, the person that people respect the most in the dressing room, and all of these different factors, I think, have combined to give Mbappé a very loose or wobbly platform from which to perform.”

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