Kylian Mbappe: Real Madrid move secured, focus turns to Euro 2024 for next true superstar

Jude Bellingham, apparently on a fast-track to superstardom if not already there, deferred to a counterpart who’d climbed to that status long before him.

“He can take us to the next level,” the Real Madrid tyro said of Kylian Mbappe, days before the Frenchman’s years-in-the-making move to the Spanish giants was confirmed.

The next level? Bellingham was speaking on the pitch at Wembley Stadium earlier this month, moments after Madrid had captured a 15th Uefa Champions League title. It represented their sixth in the past decade.

But that is precisely what Mbappe is expected to do. If his transfer from Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) to Madrid was floated seven years ago but formalised only last week, he has been considered an elite footballer for what feels forever.

Mbappe was a Fifa World Cup winner aged 19. He scored in the 2018 final, becoming the first teenager to do so since Pele, some six decades before.

Less than four years on from Russia, Mbappe struck a hat-trick in an astonishing showpiece in Qatar, although this time he finished as runner-up to Lionel Messi and Argentina. Yet the defeat in Doha did little to shadow his shine. Far from it.

Later chosen as Hugo Lloris’ successor as captain of his country, Mbappe now represents the most recognisable club in football. He had always seemed destined to.

There’s the photo, ubiquitous and ultimately prophetic, of a youthful Mbappe lying on his bed, chin resting on hands, as he looks longingly at posters of Cristiano Ronaldo in Madrid white all around him. The reading was that Mbappe was dreaming of one day following the Portuguese’s path there.

A few years from when that image was taken, and with those within top-level football having already identified Mbappe as a youngster