King Mbappe ready to claim Messi’s crown
Frenchman has all the qualities to take mantle of the world’s best – but where will PSG superstar finally rule?
‘Hurricane Mbappe”, as Spanish newspaper Diario AS called it, has swept through European football and ripped the old order to shreds. After the devastation caused by the Paris St-germain striker at the Nou Camp on Tuesday, the world now waits to see where the pieces will land.
Is this the official end of the Lionel Messi era? Is it the final shattering of Barcelona’s mystique in European competition? And, most enticingly, did PSG’S 4-1 victory mark the start of Kylian Mbappe’s dominance of the modern game?
Barcelona’s Antoine Griezmann, who spent most of Tuesday’s match watching helplessly as Mbappe tore his side to pieces, summarised it best after the final whistle, saying: “We all need to enjoy Kylian – PSG have a player who will be of the class of Leo and Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Mbappe’s hat-trick, the first Champions League treble against Barcelona in the Nou Camp since 1997, felt like a defining moment in his, and Messi’s, story. The Argentine was crowded out of the match, rendered largely irrelevant by PSG’S organised approach. Messi could only look on with envy as Mbappe – all explosive dribbling and imaginative thinking – surged through the home side’s feeble defence.
Other teams have kept Messi quiet in recent years, with Roma, Liverpool and Bayern Munich all inflicting humiliating defeats on Barcelona. But rarely has he been so emphatically overshadowed by one player. Messi looked all of his 33 years when compared to the dancing feet of the talented 22-year-old.
The tie is not over. After all, only four years have passed since PSG surrendered a four-goal lead against the same opponents in the Champions League. But the gradual crumbling of Barcelona’s aura makes it hard to envisage any other outcome than a comfortable PSG win.
With Messi a declining force, and Ronaldo now 36, the feeling is that Mbappe’s time has arrived. It could be argued his time had already come, given the World Cup medal and three league titles, although in football it can sometimes take a single night like this to crystallise a changing of the order.
Barring injuries, the 2020s will surely belong to Mbappe in the same way that the 2010s belonged to Messi and Ronaldo. But where will he place his throne – with PSG in France? With Real Madrid in Spain? Or even somewhere in England?
The financial difficulties of the Spanish clubs make La Liga a less likely destination than it would have been a decade ago. But Mbappe’s current deal expires in the summer of 2022, and he has said only that he is “thinking very hard” about whether or not to sign a new one.
Mbappe has reached the 20-goal mark in each of the past five seasons and as well as Barcelona, has scored goals away against Bayern Munich, Juventus, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United.
If he were to lead PSG to Champions League glory this season, it would further underline what the footballing world saw on Tuesday: that this Frenchman is no longer the future of the game. He is the present.