Mbappé’s 87th-minute finish on Sunday, tucked in from an Eduardo Camavinga cutback after Jude Bellingham had cut Barcelona open, handed Real Madrid a 2-1 win at Spotify Camp Nou and ended Hansi Flick’s side’s unbeaten start to the season.
The second goal was also his 100th for the club. According to Real Madrid’s own release, he is only the 24th player to reach a century for the Spanish side and the fourth fastest to do so, hitting the mark in his 116th appearance.
Valdano: a leader by numbers
Jorge Valdano, the Argentine World Cup winner who later ran Real Madrid as sporting director, used the Movistar Plus Deportes programme La Casa del Fútbol to frame the Camp Nou brace as the moment the leadership question stopped needing an answer, in comments carried by Goal.
“There are technical leaders, emotional leaders, social leaders… everyone has their way of leading. A guy who scores at a rate of one per game, how can he not be a leader?”
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Mbappé has 14 goals and three assists in 13 appearances this season, the kind of return Valdano argued carries more weight than any dressing-room speech, as reported by Africa Soccer.
“Mbappé is a very, very intelligent person and he leads even if he doesn’t want to, because whatever occurs to him is sure to catch the attention of his team-mates,” Valdano told the Movistar programme.
Mbappé pushes the credit outwards
Mbappé himself did not reach for the leadership label when he spoke to Real Madrid TV in the Camp Nou tunnel.
“It’s a team victory. The stars of the match are the team and the squad,” he told the club channel, calling his personal milestone “a minor detail” on a night when ending Barcelona’s run mattered more.
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That reading of the game sits closer to the one offered by José Mourinho, back in charge at the Bernabéu since July. The Portuguese coach credited his players rather than the opposition at full time.
Mourinho’s Clasico run and the title race
The win extended Mourinho’s unbeaten run against Barcelona to six matches, four wins and two draws, according to The Analyst. It was also Real Madrid’s first victory at Camp Nou in three years.
Mbappé’s five goals in two visits to Barça as a Real Madrid player are the most by any Blancos player since the start of 2013-14, surpassing Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema on four each.
Real Madrid now sit three points behind Barcelona in La Liga, with Atlético Madrid between them, two points off the top. The next Clasico in La Liga is scheduled for the second half of the season.
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