Kylian Mbappé has said his start at Real Madrid could not have gone worse and admitted he had to give himself a pep talk to turn his form around.
Mbappé has looked back to his brilliant best in the build-up to Real Madrid’s Champions League game at home to Red Bull Salzburg on Wednesday, when the European champions need a win to boost their fading hopes of finishing in the automatic qualification places.
Mbappé has scored four goals in his past three games, including two in a 4-1 win over Las Palmas on Sunday, but he was criticised for a slow start following his long-awaited move from Paris Saint-Germain last summer. The Frenchman failed to score in his first three La Liga games and then managed only one goal in seven matches during October and the start of November.
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“A player always wants more, for me and for the team, so when you don’t do that, it’s normal it impacts you,” Mbappé said. “I knew this could happen and in the end, it was good because I changed my mentality and I was like ‘I cannot play any worse. Things can only get better.’ ”
Mbappé now has 18 goals from his first 30 matches for Real Madrid but the 26-year-old says he understood why some chose to “speak badly” of him. He was accused of going missing in important games against Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona and AC Milan while the striker said he hit “rock bottom” after missing a penalty in a defeat away at Athletic Bilbao in December.
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“It was more a mental thing,” Mbappé said. “I thought, ‘Now I have to do more’, quite simply. I thought I was fine physically and with the team but I needed to do more, I knew that. It was a moment when I said, ‘Come on, this is the time to change. You have not come to Madrid to play badly.’ ”
Mbappé’s two goals on Sunday came while playing more centrally, with Carlo Ancelotti still juggling how best to combine Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior, who are both more dangerous coming in off the left, with Jude Bellingham behind and Rodrygo on the right. Mbappé said he was “thinking too much” in his first few weeks at Real, about “how to find space, whether I was in Vini’s zone or Rodrygo’s”.
Asked how players should solve that problem, Ancelotti said: “Think less. When you’re in a difficult situation, you have to go back to basics.” On Mbappé’s role with Vinícius, Ancelotti said: “At first, they interchanged a bit more and now a bit less. We have made this change recently just to fix the offensive level and the position of Bellingham, who plays behind. It wasn’t to improve the performance of Mbappé.”
Ancelotti also denied he has decided to leave Real Madrid at the end of the season after the Onda Cero radio station reported on Monday that the Italian would depart in the summer, with Xabi Alonso the favourite to replace him.
“No, it’s not like that. I want to be very clear: I will never decide the day when I will leave this club, never in my life,” Ancelotti, whose contract expires in 2026, said. “I know perfectly well that one day that moment will come, but I don’t know when it will be. I haven’t decided. It could be tomorrow, in a few games, one year, five years, I don’t know.”
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Real are 20th in the Champions League table, four points adrift of the top eight with two games left to play. They are in the play-off spots, along with Bayern Munich, Juventus and Manchester City, which would mean playing an extra, two-legged tie next month. “There isn’t much chance [of making the top eight] but our only chance is to win the last two games,” Ancelotti said.
Real Madrid v Red Bull Salzburg
Champions League
Wednesday, 8pm
TV Discovery+/TNT Sports 5
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