Real Madrid Boss Drops Bombshell Prediction About Kylian Mbappe Following Cristiano Ronaldo's Footsteps

Real Madrid coach Álvaro Arbeloa confessed that Kylian Mbappé is approaching Cristiano Ronaldo's achievements for the Spanish club more closely than anyone had previously imagined.

"We're struggling to find words to describe Kylian," Ronaldo's former Madrid colleague expressed enthusiastically after witnessing Mbappé score his 38th goal of the campaign in his 31st match against Valencia on Sunday evening. "We believed we'd never witness anything comparable to Cristiano, and it appears Mbappé is moving in that trajectory."

Ronaldo concluded his Real Madrid tenure with four Champions League victories, two La Liga championships and an incredible tally of 450 goals across 438 matches, surpassing any other player in the distinguished history of Europe's most triumphant club. Mbappé hasn't quite reached the pace to exceed his boyhood hero, but the mere discussion of such comparisons speaks volumes about the Frenchman's abilities.

How Kylian Mbappe Compares to Cristiano Ronaldo

How Kylian Mbappe Compares to Cristiano Ronaldo

Goals

Goals

Mbappé's performance at Mestalla, a fixture his coach likened to a dental appointment, proved to be another delightful experience for the 27-year-old. The unexpected hero, left-back Álvaro Carreras, opened the scoring in a sluggish encounter just past the hour mark before Mbappé clinched the victory in added time with a composed side-footed finish into the near corner.

This marked Mbappé's 82nd strike for Real Madrid in his 90th outing for the team. Ronaldo managed to register 86 goals during his initial 90 appearances.

Similar to his replacement, the Portuguese icon enjoyed a solid yet not spectacular first season before exploding in his sophomore year. Ronaldo completed the 2010–11 season with 53 strikes in 54 appearances, featuring 40 domestic league goals—though MARCA attempted to credit him with 41, conveniently ignoring the deflection of a strike that UEFA and La Liga attributed to Pepe.

Despite his nickname as "Penaldo," Mbappé has shown greater dependence on penalty kicks, with nearly a quarter (23%) of his strikes originating from the spot versus Ronaldo's 15% rate. Notably, 11 of Ronaldo's total also stemmed from direct set pieces during his initial two seasons in Madrid, showcasing that knuckleball expertise which would eventually abandon him but remained sharp at the time.

Results

Results

Mbappé's personal impact on Real Madrid cannot be disputed. He accounts for 41% of all goals the squad has netted during his appearances, with an impressive 24 of his efforts serving as match-winners. Ronaldo, by contrast, delivered victory-securing goals in 15 of his first 90 Madrid fixtures, though the overall composition of his team proved more successful than Mbappé's current version.

Manuel Pellegrini guided Madrid to an admirable 96-point haul in the 2009–10 La Liga season. Regrettably, Pep Guardiola's dominant Barcelona collected 99 points that identical year, relegating Ronaldo and his new team to a respectable runner-up position. Barcelona would triumph again in the league during 2010–11 (and eliminate Real Madrid from the Champions League semifinals) but the arriving José Mourinho had transformed the squad into a precision counter-attacking machine.

Ronaldo experienced just three defeats in his second campaign in the capital—Mbappé has already endured five this season—and netted the decisive goal in the 2011 Copa del Rey final to prevent Guardiola's team from claiming a second treble in three campaigns.

The atmosphere was volatile behind closed doors, but Mourinho extracted peak performance from Ronaldo and Madrid collectively, engineering a remarkable 2011–12 La Liga triumph that saw Los Blancos establish new benchmarks for points, goals scored and victories. Whether Arbeloa, an admitted Mourinho devotee, can inspire similar displays from Mbappé and this contemporary Madrid squad remains an open question.