Kylian Mbappé, the former Paris Saint-Germain forward, officially joined Real Madrid on Monday. The French star, arriving as a free agent, signed a five-year contract with the Spanish giants.
According to a recent report from Sky Sports News, the 2018 FIFA World Cup winner will receive a signing-on bonus of just over €100 million and will sign a five-year contract, earning €15 million a year after tax.
While it’s a honeymoon period right now, and it will be so for the first few weeks of the 2024-25 season, eventually that will fade. One journalist believes that Mbappé will face the pressure to succeed right away, especially on a team coming off winning La Liga and the UEFA Champions League.
Nonetheless, Le Parisien journalist Laurent Perrin believes that the 25-year-old will have to adapt to accept Real Madrid’s demands, something that wasn’t always the case at PSG since the capital club did everything to keep the player happy.
“He will quickly understand that Real is not PSG,” Perrin noted (h/t Le10Sport). “I even think he’s known it for a long time. In Paris, the leaders knelt before him; they granted all his requests, and the coaches sought to put him in the best possible condition. At Real, Ancelotti will take care of himself, but he will not be above the team.
“If Mbappé scores three goals per match, everyone will accept his nonchalance on defensive work. In terms of attitude, Mbappé knows that he is not reaching conquered territory. But we can count on Ancelotti to assign him the roadmap that suits him. Mbappé will never be a furious defender, but he is capable of working for the collective, as he did sometimes with the Blues, and too rarely with PSG.”
