Paolo’s Column: It’s unofficial Mbappe is the Best PLayer in the World
We don’t hate Kylian; we just love the past too much. How could we not? We were lucky enough to witness the inevitable consistency of Messi’s boundless genius and Ronaldo’s unparalleled ability to translate talent into winning. We love those memories. But memories—no matter how beloved—exist in the past. So, we’re afraid if we say they’re not the best in the world anymore that we’ll forget they ever were. We’re afraid if we say “Kylian Mbappe is better than Messi and Ronaldo” that it will mean Mbappe is better than Messi and Ronaldo were. But you can’t win today’s game with yesterday’s performance.
So, let’s say it together. We can whisper it in hushed tones so no one in Rosario or Madeira hears us. Or we can shout it at the top of our lungs to make sure everyone in Paris does. Kylian Mbappe is the best player in the world.
Not the best young player in the world. Not the best winger in the world. Not the best player other than Cristiano and Messi (which is how we measured everyone else from Dec. 2, 2008 to yesterday). Mbappe is the best player in the world. There are no caveats, no qualifiers, no addendums.
For the past 14 years, no matter what a player accomplished, they could only hope to be third best in the world.
So what if they were the best player on a treble winning team? (Sneijder, Ribery). So what if they won the World Cup and forever changed the way their position is played? (Neuer). So what if they scored the game winning goal in the World Cup final (Iniesta)? None of those accomplishments, no matter how deserving in the arc of football’s history could have ever compared to the present day greatness of their contemporaries. Messi and Ronaldo were simply better.
Until now. Yesterday, after PSG’s 1-0 win over Real Madrid, in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16, Kylian Mbappe unofficially became the best player in the world. It will become official when he wins the Ballon d’Or. It’s unofficial because he’s doing things that can’t quite be quantified but still, for some reason, make you feel a player is the best. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on why. It’s unofficial because he’s beaten Messi and Ronaldo at their own game. And once you beat them there’s no one left to beat.
Mbappe’s 94th minute winner against Real Madrid, on Tuesday night, came just four days after his 93rd minute winner against Stade Rennais in Ligue 1. This ability to perform, seemingly at will, in a game’s biggest moment by transforming sheer determination into perfect technical execution is what made Ronaldo the best. It’s something that Ronaldo can, and still, does do. He scored the winner…in stoppage time…against Villareal…in the Champions League group stage. Except, Mbappe scored the winner…in stoppage time…against Real Madrid…in the Champions League knockout stage. Mbappe delivered a Ronaldo-esque moment of mystical clutchness. That was just a little bit more clutch and seeped in a tad more mysticism. It’s not that a single moment tips the balance of each of their careers it’s that this moment perfectly encapsulates Ronaldo’s legacy and, at the same time, his current inability to keep pace with Mbappe, as he outperforms him at his own specialty.
As for Messi, it’s his proximity to Mbappe which is so definitively damning. How can Messi be the best player in the world if he’s not even the best player on his team? It’s a logical fallacy.
Interestingly, it was Messi who first allowed us to recognize best-in-the-world status as a function of ranked choice voting between teammates. In 2010, all three finalists for the Ballon d’Or were Barcelona players—Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi. There were great cases for the two Spaniards, who had just the World Cup. One, as we mentioned, scored the winning goal in the last minutes of the World Cup final. The other, was a footballing genius and the perfect incarnation of the collaborative beauty of team sports. Both of those arguments were immediately and irrevocably rendered moot by the simple fact that neither was Barcelona’s best player. Leo Messi was. So, neither won the award, because you can’t be the best in the world if you’re not even the best on your team.
Mbappe will never have more footballing talent than Messi (only Diego can compare). However, to say that alone disqualifies Mbappe from being the best in the world is unfair to Messi. Who was never just talent. Messi was the apotheosis of realized potential, translating his talent into both the intangible—the general magic of his play—and the tangible—wins. One of his greatest intangible talents seemed to be breaking Real Madrid’s hearts. Another challenge which Mbappe accepted, and bettered, on Tuesday night, by outperforming the very best when Messi couldn’t. Messi’s immense talent remains even if its output has diminished, from the god-like to “merely” the very good, but we should still remember that it was precisely his capacity to turn ability into goals, that made him the best. It’s just that, now, his goals have been replaced by a teammate’s.
It isn’t cruel irony that the same standards are now turned against Messi and Ronaldo. It’s yet another testament to their greatness; they determined the way we define best-in-the-world. The measuring stick is of their own making. It just so happens that, for the first time in their careers, someone has outgrown them.