Real Madrid will let the dust settle, the Cibeles Fountain – where they party after all their trophy wins – clear and the hangovers pass following their historic 15th Champions League triumph before they announce the signing of Kylian Mbappe.
Just the construction of that sentence alone will send a shudder through the rest of European football. Without Mbappe, Madrid again proved to be the best team on the continent – and have won the Champions League six times in the past 11 seasons – and now they are going to add the world’s most devastating forward. An announcement will be made this week.
While it is the culmination of a pursuit that has effectively gone on for 12 years – ever since Mbappe was first invited to Madrid, with Zinedine Zidane acting as his chauffeur and Cristiano Ronaldo happy to be photographed – there was always an inevitability that he would one day pull on the fabled white shirt.
There may have been a few false starts and surprising U-turns but Mbappe is the world’s most prized free transfer. His signing will prove to be far more important than Paris St-Germain acquiring Lionel Messi, given the captain of France is still just 25 and absolutely coming into his prime.
The lure of Madrid would always win just as it did for Jude Bellingham. His parents, Mark and Denise who guide his career, were smart enough to talk to all suitors – chiefly Manchester City – but, actually, always knew their son was destined to join Los Merengues.
It is not just Mbappe who is arriving this summer with Brazilian prodigy Endrick able to make the move after the Copa America and his 18th birthday in July. Madrid agreed a €60 million deal to sign him from Palmeiras 18 months ago and Endrick has already made his mark on the European stage, having scored the winning goal in Brazil’s friendly victory over England last March.
The signing owed much to the extraordinarily assiduous work of Juni Calafat, Madrid’s head scout whose influence extends way beyond that relatively modest title. The Brazilian has implemented the bold and successful policy of pursuing some of the world’s most precocious talents and not least from his homeland.
And so the rest of football will face a new dynasty; a new kindergarten version of the ‘galacticos’ and while Mbappe will immediately become the jewel in that line-up he will have to not only work hard to outshine the others but, at 25, is already one of the older players.
There is Bellingham at 20, Endrick at (soon-to-be) 18, Arda Guler 19, Eduardo Camavinga 21, Vinicius and Rodrygo both 23, Aurelien Tchouameni and Brahim Diaz both 24, and Fede Valverde at 25. These are players with their best years ahead of them but already – bar Endrick – Champions League winners.
In fact, more than half of Madrid’s transfer spend over the last six years has been committed to players 21 or younger. That is around €415 million. But then Mbappe’s market value would be €300 million alone as would Bellingham’s. And that is without considering Vinicius.
It is a much more astute transfer policy than during Florentino Perez’s first term as president, from 2000 to 2006, when he signed the likes of Zidane, Luis Figo and David Beckham and felt he needed to do so to stay in office. Perez is now 77 and not under that pressure. Neither are Madrid making the same misstep of overspending on someone like Eden Hazard. Now they wait, they sign young and they use their allure – hence why David Alaba and Antonio Rudiger were so eager to join on relatively cut-price deals.
It is also through expediency, of course, with Madrid’s finances remaining under severe scrutiny, but no-one can argue that they have not – with their policy – added huge value to their squad and thrown down a challenge to their competitors. The appeal of the Madrid shirt is undoubted and with their latest signings they have not only brought more players with incredible potential and futures but strengthened what is already the most formidable club side in world football.
What will be intriguing is how they fit in. The perceived wisdom is that Mbappe will have to play as a No 9 – a role he balked at with PSG and does not like for France either, preferring to come in from the left. But Vinicius should be retained there with Rodrygo on the right (for now).
It would mean Bellingham dropping into a midfield three alongside Valverde and either Tchouameni or Camavinga and it will be fascinating to see if it works. The worry for Madrid’s rivals is that if any coach can do it then Carlo Ancelotti can and the Italian – called the “final boss” by Borussia Dortmund coach Edin Terzic before the Wembley final – extended his contract at the Bernabeu last December until 2026 having been interested in the Brazil national team job until there was a change of president.
But whatever happens, whatever permutation Ancelotti comes up with, Madrid will already be favourites to retain the Champions League when the final is played in Munich on May 31 2025. The rest of Europe knows that.