Kylian Mbappe isn’t just a brilliant footballer, he’s a brilliant Pochballer. Can Pochettino possibly succeed in Paris without him?
Kylian Mbappe is very good at football.
We’ve genuinely spent a good hour trying to decide precisely how to start this piece, but sometimes you have to accept that the central premise is obvious And just go with it. He is absurdly good. At football.
Obviously, this is hardly news. But Tuesday night’s performance against Real Madrid was still a hugely significant one for him, his manager and the future of both clubs.
Long before his beautiful and brilliant injury-time goal gave PSG the slenderest of leads to take to Real Madrid he was already the game’s standout player by a wide margin. Everything had involved him. He’d forced Thibaut Courtois into a couple of good saves and won the penalty which Lionel Messi failed to convert.
While it’s long been the case that Messi has never been more Human After All than when standing over a spot-kick, a man who effortlessly and expertly directs 25-yard free-kicks over and around five-man walls into the very top corners of goals around the world suddenly and inexplicably reduced to “Well if I kick it pretty well it’ll probably go in, won’t it?” when faced with a clear shot on goal from half the distance, there’s no point denying the #narrative.
While Messi was a million miles from dreadful here – it was a solid 7/10 for most elite-level professional footballers – his presence in Paris as a fading force only highlights the brilliance of Mbappe as the torch is passed.
Cristiano Ronaldo, belligerent prick that he is, of course decided to pick this very night to end his own scoring drought to dampen down the #narrative but it’s still there.
The virtuosity of Mbappe’s display in Paris was capped off with the goal it deserved, and what a lovely thing it was too. Neymar, fit enough for a hugely enjoyable cameo from the bench, found him with an extremely Neymar backheel but Mbappe had a million things still to do and almost no time or space in which to do them. A touch here, a shimmy there, a shot skimmed through the legs of Courtois and five seconds later the tie was changed.
It was a more significant goal than ever before now we live in the post away-goals era. In the olden times of last year, PSG would have been frustrated at their failure to turn dominance into goals but would know that a single goal in Madrid would transform the tie. While Madrid may have approached this first leg differently had the away goal carried its previous significance, there’s also a valid argument that in the face of this PSG performance, Madrid could do little else than hope to cling on as they did.
It was also a huge goal for Mauricio Pochettino, whose serene progress towards the Ligue 1 title is almost entirely irrelevant to his future in Paris. These are the nights on which he will be judged, and until that final moment – and for all the encouragement of the performance – the possibly unsolvable tension between Pochettino’s methods and PSG’s superstars was visible.
For all that this was in so many ways a classic Pochball display, all pressing from the front and high defensive lines, there remains the Messi problem: for all that he still unquestionably offers, he simply cannot – and cannot be expected to – perform the pressing role Pochettino wants to see.
Neymar was lively when he came on, but the game was tending towards late chaos by the time of his intervention. In terms of structure and plan and cohesion, PSG were far better with Mbappe and Angel Di Maria leading the line, with Messi operating in the full cheating position behind them and absolved of responsibility by that front two and the irrepressible Marco Verratti behind him.
In Pochettino’s previous roles, this would be less of a problem. First because he would never have a Messi to begin with, but also because the team was always more important than any individual. And his squads and his clubs bought into that philosophy. That old line about players “signing a contract to train” was central to his vision, right up until the 2019 Champions League final anyway.
At PSG, that’s harder. Not just because of the superstars in the squad but the whole identity and purpose of the club. He has to win the Champions League, and he probably has to do it this season, but he also has to accept why Your Neymars and Your Messis are here. Part footballers, part brand ambassadors for the Qatari owners. That is the reality. It is far harder to bench them than it would have been with even Harry Kane at Spurs. It is an entirely different world.
Here, then, is another reason why Mbappe is so very, very important. He is not just insanely good, but he is also a Pochettino player. The perfect blend who brings the disparate strands of what PSG are all about together. He is a bona fide superstar, and the best player on the team, but also a crucial part of that team, and frankly an unimprovably perfect player for everything his manager wants.
And that’s why it has to be this season for Pochettino in Paris. Even if he keeps his job after failing to deliver that long-awaited European title, any future attempt will happen without Mbappe. And even for this club and these owners, he is irreplaceable.
Which brings us to the final significant factor in all this. Real Madrid, comfortably second best here and even with home advantage facing an exceedingly tough-looking task to change that in the second leg. And yet throughout the game an undeniable sense that the whole timbre and tone of the tie would have been entirely different were Mbappe in white not blue.
Next year, we will probably get the chance to find out if that is true.
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