The Mbappe Ballon d’Or campaign has been running quietly for months. This week the candidate decided to run it himself.
In a long interview with France Football, reported by Get French Football News, Kylian Mbappe was asked to make the case for the season he has just had. He did not bother with the usual modesty. “There has been no better player than me,” the Real Madrid striker said, a few weeks out from the 70th edition of the ceremony.
The Mbappe Ballon d’Or case, in his own words
The numbers he leans on are not trivial. Mbappe, 27, put 42 goals in 44 appearances across all competitions in his second season in Madrid, finishing as top scorer in both the Champions League (15) and La Liga (25). Add the 10 he scored at the World Cup and you have a body of work that most voters would struggle to wave away.
His own favourite line of argument, though, is historical rather than statistical.
“Being the all-time top scorer in World Cup history (22 goals), overtaking all the greatest legends in history, in the most important tournament sport has ever produced — that’s something that really sticks in the mind,” he told France Football.
The hole in it is the one Get French Football News points out in the same piece: for all of that, it was a season in which he did not lift a single trophy. Which is precisely where Paris come in.
The Parisian counter-argument
Paris Saint-Germain spent the same twelve months doing the thing Mbappe’s argument quietly skips. Luis Enrique’s side retained the Champions League, becoming one of only nine clubs in history to win back-to-back European Cups and only the second to manage it since the competition was rebranded. That is the sort of season that tends to decide these votes.
It is also why the club has put a record contingent of players on this year’s list. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has been publicly backed by Michel Platini and Toni Kroos, and answered it with a shrug: “it doesn’t depend on me, it depends on the people who decide.” Desire Doue is in the conversation after a breakthrough campaign, having finished 31st in last year’s vote. And the reigning holder, Ousmane Dembele, has spent the week arguing that the prize is “a collective trophy, but also an individual one nonetheless”.
That is the fault line. Mbappe is asking the jury to judge a player. Paris are asking it to judge a player inside the team that won everything. If you want the mechanics of how that is actually weighed up, we have set them out in our guide to how the Ballon d’Or works.
Why it lands differently at the Parc
None of this would carry the same charge if the man making the claim were not a former Paris player. Mbappe’s years in the capital are still argued over in the stands, and hearing him rate himself above a squad that has just retained the European Cup is the kind of line that gets replayed in the Auteuil end for a fortnight.
It is worth saying he is not entirely wrong to push. The Ballon d’Or has gone to players on trophyless teams before, and 42 goals in 44 games is a serious case however it is dressed up. The question is whether a jury looking at a Paris side with that much talent in the front line will want to hand the sport’s biggest individual prize to a man whose season ended with nothing in the cabinet.
Paris, for their part, have more immediate concerns. They are away at Brest still chasing a first Ligue 1 win of the season, and the ceremony is a few weeks off yet. But the campaigning has started, and the loudest voice in it belongs to someone who used to wear the shirt.
