Kylian Mbappe has completed a year donning the whites of Real Madrid. Playing for the club you grew up supporting is always a surreal, almost unexplainable feeling that not many footballers get to experience. Mbappe, one of the best footballers on the planet, is a member of the chosen few who grew up to play for the club they always dreamt of being in.
And his first year hasn’t been in shambles either, a total of 51 G/A would make you believe so, even if Real weren’t able to win any trophies after Hansi Flick’s Barcelona clean-swept the La Liga table playing attacking football with a young line-up led by the wonderkid Lamine Yamal. After the legendary Carlo Ancelotti left Santiago Bernabeu to coach the Brazilian national team, former Real Madrid midfielder Xabi Alonso, who also happens to be one of the best young managers in the world, took over the reins of the club after a very successful spell at Bayer Leverkusen.
If you’ve been following transfer news since the start of this decade, Mbappe’s name would always crop up during the summer transfer window. Mbappe was the constant center of attention in the ugly tug of war between Paris St. Germain and Real Madrid, with the former doing everything they could, including giving Mbappe some power in decision-making, to make him stay at the Parc des Princes. Nasser Al Khellafi, PSG’s President, made France President Emmanel Macron personally meet Mbappe to persuade him to stay at the club during the summer of 2022, a move previously unheard of.
When Mbappe arrived at Santiago Bernabeu as Florentino Perez’s superstar galactico, expectations were sky-high. Here was the future Ballon d’Or winner, at the most successful club in the world, playing alongside world-class superstars like Jude Bellingham and Vinicius Jr.
In a parallel universe, however, we could have seen Kylian burst through the left wing at Munich’s Allianz Arena, or don the famous black and yellow of Borussia Dortmund in a Champions League Final. Now, we know it sounds unbelievable, almost a pipe dream. But reality is often stranger than fiction.
Talking to the German news outlet Bild, the 26-year-old said the following:
“Has a German club ever called me? Many clubs have contacted me. Bayern Munich reached out to me when I was younger at Monaco. Dortmund also inquired about me, as well as Leipzig, those are the three I remember. Everyone is asking now, but it’s too late.”
Mbappe was a hot young prospect at AS Monaco, and grabbed eyeballs from top European scouts in his teenage years. He was heavily influential in leading Monaco to the Ligue 1 title in 2016-17, their first league title since the year 2000. Monaco’s historic triumph enabled them to stop PSG from marching to a fifth consecutive league title, and attracted global attention to a line-up that employed the services of Bernardo Silva, Radamel Falcao, and, of course, the subject of our discussion, Kylian Mbappe, who netted 26 goals in 44 appearances for the team coached by Leonardo Jardim.
Confirming that German giants Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund approached him in his younger days, Mbappe jokingly quipped that it was now “too late” to consider going to Germany.
However, although it is not a popular fact in the world of football, Dortmund had almost pulled off the unthinkable in 2016. Former Dortmund sporting director, Sven Mislintat, admitted that his club had almost signed Mbappe on a free transfer from Monaco in 2016, while speaking to the Kicker meets DAZN podcast in 2021.
“Kylian Mbappe was free of charge at a certain point and there were many suitors. But we had no chance of winning that race.”
Mbappe joining Dortmund proves to be one of the most massive “what if” moments in football.
