Kylian Mbappe Wants to Win the Champions League—Real Madrid Being Capable Is Another Matter

Towards the end of last season, the sight of Kylian Mbappé leaving Real Madrid’s training base Valdebebas while laughing was enough to send sections of the capital club’s media into a tail spin.

On May 7, the forward was pictured cracking a smile in his car the same day that his teammates Federico Valderde and Aurélien Tchouaméni had gotten into a now infamous bust-up, resulting in the former needing to be sent to hospital. It was the nadir of a desperately poor season by Madrid standards, and was Mbappé was deemed to be not taking things seriously.

The Frenchman’s laugh, combined with an ill-timed vacation while injured and a second successive season without a trophy since joining from Paris Saint-Germain contributed to an environment in which an online petition demanding Mbappé’s Madrid exit garnered tens of millions of online signatures.

Now, three months on, it is new manager José Mourinho who is cracking up, but for much more positive reasons.

“He’s incredible,” the 63-year-old said of Mbappé. “He sometimes makes me laugh in training ... He’s just too good.”

The bitterness and animosity that took a stranglehold on the end of last season seems a good distance away in the rearview mirror as Real Madrid have won two from two at the start of 2026–27. Mbappé’s superb hat-trick against Real Sociedad in the 4–1 midweek victory prompted Mourinho’s praise and it’s clear the France international is going to be central to this revamped Madrid’s success.

‘We Have to Win’—Mbappé

First Hat-Trick of LALIGA season 26/27 🫡 pic.twitter.com/vHWlvvolJc
— LALIGA English (@LaLigaEN) August 28, 2026

Speaking ahead of the season, Mbappé was unequivocal about Los Blancos’s ambitions when speaking to the club’s in-house media team: “We have to win. I am sure that this year we are going to win titles again. That’s what we want, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Wrestling La Liga back from Barcelona, who can become the first team since themselves under Pep Guardiola to win three titles in a row, is high on the list of priorities but the real goal for Mbappé is Europe.

Now 27, it feels like a glitch in the matrix that he has never won the Champions League—a fact that his move to the team synonymous with European glory was supposed to correct. Meanwhile, the club he left behind has gone on to win two title in a row and is favorite for a Madrid-matching three-peat this year.

There is little doubt that personally, Mbappé is ready to lift the big trophy. He top-scored in last season’s tournament, despite Madrid going out in the quarterfinals, with 15 goals in 11 games—a tally that has only ever been bettered in a single season by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Even with all the noise over the past two campaigns he has still put up astonishing numbers (89 goals in 105 games) and is the first player since the great Mario Kempes to win the Pichichi Trophy (for La Liga’s top scorer) in his first two seasons in the country.

At international level, it’s a similar story. He became the first man to win two World Cup Golden Boot trophies this July, after overtaking Lionel Messi on his way to become the tournament’s all-time leading scorer. Both this summer’s France and the Real Madrid teams he has been a part of have been deeply flawed. So, imagine then what he might do in a more settled and balanced team.

Madrid Have Questions to Answer in Search of European Glory

José Mourinhohasn’t won the Champions League since 2010. | Hesham Elsherif/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The question is not really whether Mbappé is good enough to finally get his hands on the Champions League, but is this Madrid team?

Even asking that of Real Madrid feels faintly ridiculous. It is a soccer truism that you can simply never rule the 15-time winners out of contention when it comes to Europe, but the last two seasons have undermined Madrid’s sense of inevitability.

In Mbappé’s first year at the club, Los Blancos came undone against the collective brilliance of Arsenal in the quarterfinals, before falling to a sparkling Bayern Munich side at the same stage back in April.

The trophyless end to 2025–26 prompted Florentino Pérez into action and Madrid have reinforced this summer with sensible signings designed to add experience, depth and game-changing potential to an already talented roster in the hopes of restoring the club to the levels of 2023–24—the last time they won the Champions League. However, the one area Pérez hasn’t strengthened may be the most crucial.

Club legend Toni Kroos rode off into the sunset after the Champions League final win over Dortmund two years ago—after bagging an assist for the opener—and has still not been replaced. After being snubbed by Rodri this summer, the club have seemingly opted not to go for another deep-lying controller.

As things stand, the center of the pitch still looks like the weak point in the Death Star, the area where Madrid can be dominated in the bigger matches against the likes of Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. There are serious doubts too over Mourinho’s center back options and whether any are at the level required to compete with the very best.

Then there is Mourinho himself. The Special One, who made his name in Europe, has not won the Champions League since 2010, and not even been a part of the semifinal stage since 2014. The game has changed hugely since he was sprinting down the touchline at Old Trafford after pulling off one of the all-time great upsets with Porto, or dodging sprinklers at Camp Nou.

Mourinho has tried to portray himself as a more relaxed, avuncular figure in the early part of his second term at Madrid—a wiser, less rash Mourinho 2.0—but the worry is still that he will eventually—and inevitably—add to the club’s locker-room dramas rather than fix them.

This is also a concern with Mbappé.

PSG finally ended their Champions League hoodoo the year their star man left, with previously considered fringe players coming to the fore and new talents emerging as part of a more coherent, fluid super-team. A couple of years ago, who really would ever predicted that Ousmane Dembélé would have won the Ballon d’Or ahead of his France teammate Mbappé?

When Luis Enrique’s side retained their European crown a year later as Madrid floundered, the question as to whether Mbappé was the problem grew louder.

In two years, Madrid have not successfully determined how to build a team around the superstar in. a way that keeps him and his teammates happy.

Figure out the problem this year and they’ll all be laughing.

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