French forward for Real Madrid, Kylian Mbappé, stated on Monday that it is quite natural for people to consider him a potential winner of the Ballon d'Or this year, given his achievements at the World Cup.
The captain of the French national team scored 10 goals in the tournament this summer, winning the Golden Boot, while his country finished fourth. Throughout his career, he has scored 22 goals at the World Cup, becoming the record holder for goals in this tournament.
Mbappé, who is 27 years old, has not yet received the prestigious award given to the world's best players. He told reporters: 'I think when you play for Real Madrid, which is the best club in the world, people naturally associate you with that type of award; they associate you with collective awards, individual awards.'
He continued: 'Many people, when they see me on the street, talk to me about the Ballon d'Or; many talk about me as a possible Ballon d'Or winner... Of course, I made a lot of history this summer in the most important sporting competition, but we will see. I have a feeling this is a good year for it, but there is still a long way to go, and people are free to vote for whoever they consider the best player in the world.'
Since his move to Real Madrid in 2024, Mbappé has scored a large number of goals, but the club has failed to win a major trophy. On Tuesday, the team, which holds the record for the most European cup victories (15 times), will host Inter Milan in the first match of the Champions League group stage.
During the first two years at Madrid, the team appeared unbalanced due to the large number of stars, including the Frenchman and Brazilian winger Vinícius Júnior, who is widely considered to contribute insufficiently to team efforts, unlike Ousmane Dembélé at Paris Saint-Germain and Raphinha at Barcelona.
Mbappé admitted: 'We need to improve.' He added: 'But I could pretend to be stupid and tell you that I score more goals than (Dembélé and Raphinha), and that they need to score more goals to be like me. Everyone is different, but I want to do things reasonably and say that, of course, I need to improve and all that, but I don't like comparisons because I think I do many things that others do not.'
Real Madrid coach José Mourinho recently stated that he would prefer it if Mbappé scored fewer goals but worked hard to help the team win titles. Mbappé noted that he would accept fewer goals if it led to trophies, but stressed that these concepts are not mutually exclusive. 'I would take 30 goals with titles, yes, but... for me, it's an absurd debate,' said Mbappé. 'I always want to score goals and win titles... you don't have to choose, you can do both things.'
Mourinho encountered old acquaintances. The Portuguese veteran coach Mourinho led Inter to glory in the Champions League in 2010 at the Santiago Bernabéu before leaving to manage Real Madrid. Despite his history with the Italian club, which he led to a treble that year, the coach stated that it only mattered before and after the match, not during it. 'There aren't many people from my time left, but it's always nice to see people, even if I don't know them, but people who support Inter, before and after,' said Mourinho. 'During the game, I want to win; they want to win, and there won't be time to think about the wonderful past.'
Mourinho wants the Madrid players to recover from the first defeat of the season, which was 1-0 against Real Betis on Friday in La Liga. 'I want to win. I could say I want to play well, but I don't want to play well like we played against Betis and lose,' stated Mourinho. 'It is obvious that we are in a phase where we play eight matches, and the goal of these eight matches is qualification, and I think we will do it. But I want to think about this match isolated from that context. I want to think about this match as a separate game. I don't want to think that we still have seven matches, and I want to win.'
