They have not yet played a real match together. That fact deserves top billing before anything else Real Madrid have said in the past week is taken too seriously.

Mbappé was not merely optimistic about the coming season, he was certain of it.

“I’m sure that we’re going to win titles again, that’s what we want and it’s going to happen.”

His verdict on the new manager was equally unqualified.

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“I think it’s very positive to have a coach like Mourinho, who knows how to win, who knows how to give directions for us to do that.”

Mourinho is back at the Bernabéu 13 years after he last worked there. The club confirmed on 11 June that its board had “agreed to appoint José Mourinho as the first team’s head coach for the next three seasons, until June 30, 2029.”

Mourinho returns the affection

The Portuguese has returned the affection with interest. Speaking to El Chiringuito, Mourinho gave an unusually indulgent assessment of the player he is now supposed to build a team around.

“Mbappé is amazing. Sometimes he makes me laugh in training.”

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“Because he is so good, his level is from another planet.”

The detail that seemed to move Mourinho most was administrative. Mbappé had been permitted to report on 14 August after his post-World Cup break; he turned up on the 12th instead.

“A player who could have turned up on 14 August, but arrived on the 12th, that tells me a lot,” Mourinho said.

Two egos who normally sell themselves

The comedy is that the two men making the compliments are the two men in world football most reliably associated with confidence in their own genius. Mbappé has spent his career being told he is the best player alive and rarely arguing the point. Mourinho has built two decades of public persona on informing rooms full of reporters that he is not like other coaches.

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Now they are informing the same rooms that the other one is brilliant. It is charming, and, at the moment, it is evidence-free.

None of it is a title yet

Real Madrid did not play on the opening weekend of LaLiga and will start the season on Saturday, 22 August at the RCDE Stadium in Cornellà-El Prat, on the outskirts of Barcelona. Kick-off is at 9:30pm local time.

The pre-season, for what it is worth, has been fine. Real Madrid drew 2-2 with Fiorentina and then beat Ferencváros, Deportivo La Coruña and Schalke 04, the last of those 3-0 away on 16 August.

None of that is a trophy. Both Mbappé and Mourinho have said, in different words, that trophies are what they are here for. Saturday night is the first chance to actually start collecting them.

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