Kylian Mbappe is ready for the challenge of playing in the Champions League as a Real Madrid player. A competition that has eluded him throughout his career but now, in the tournament’s most successful team, he hopes to finally conquer it.
The current Champions League champions, the Merengue team, will face German side Stuttgart at the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday in the first match of the renewed format of the competition, and, as expected, the French star is eager to play this match.
“It will be very important for me. As I said on the first day, I came to Madrid to experience these kinds of nights,” said Mbappe after the victory at the weekend in their visit to Real Sociedad (0-2) in which he made his presence felt on the scoreboard (from a penalty) with his third goal of the season in LaLiga.
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The Real Madrid ‘9’, who has received criticism for his “weak” start to the season in which after having scored in the European Super Cup he went three consecutive games without scoring in the Spanish championship, said he is calm and aware of the challenge he now has ahead of him.
“I am very focused on what we have to do, the Champions League has changed a lot, it is a new competition and we have to win to start well,” said the Frenchman who already knows very well what it’s like to play in the Champions League and even played in a final that he ended up losing when he played for PSG.
But now things are different. Kylian Mbappe is with Real Madrid, who have won the Champions League 15 times, being by far the most successful team in the tournament, and starting this Tuesday he will begin the path to winning the sixteenth with the help of the Frenchman who dreams of winning his first ‘Orejona’.
How has Mbappe fared in the Champions League?
The French star has had good performances in the Champions League, although he has the thorn of having lost a final when he played with Paris Saint-Germain, and they fell to Bayern Munich in the 2019-2020 season, which was affected by Covid.
Since making his debut in the competition with AS Monaco in the 2016-2017 campaign, the 25-year-old striker has played 73 matches in Europe’s top club competition, scoring a total of 48 goals, making him the ninth all-time scorer alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Andriy Shevchenko.
Starting this Tuesday, now in his new stage with Real Madrid, Kylian Mbappe will seek to continue improving his numbers in a competition in which he was the youngest player to reach 10 goals, a figure he achieved when he was just 18 years and 350 days old.
Champion and record of titles
Current champions of the competition and with a record of 15 titles won (six of them since 2014 and more than double that of the second most successful club, Milan with 7), Mbappe’s arrival in Madrid further intimidates the rivals who aspire to the crown Manchester City, Bayern Munich, PSG and even FC Barcelona.
Before facing the continent’s big names, Carlo Ancelotti’s team must do its homework, starting on Tuesday against Stuttgart at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in the first round of the Champions League that has changed its face this season to make the tournament more exciting.
The traditional group stage is over and has been replaced by a league with 36 teams, in which each of them will face eight other teams, with a single unified classification, according to the so-called ‘Swiss system’.
