A divided Real Madrid descends into anarchy as Kylian Mbappé’s ego stokes tensions

El Chiringuito de Jugones occupies a special place in the cultural life of Spain. It is a trashy, late-night football debate show on television. It is low-budget and kitsch. Its time is mainly taken up with middle-aged men shouting at each other and crying, the kind of TV programme that is so bad it is good. Sometimes, it airs in the United States on Fox, which probably tells you all you need to know.

The host of El Chiringuito is a marvellous broadcaster, the 60-year-old Josep Pedrerol. His hair is getting longer, certainly at the back, the older he gets. Last Sunday night, he delivered one of his sermons. While he spoke, across the screen ran ticker tape, asking the question: “Is Madrid better with Mbappé or without him?”

Kylian Mbappé, a World Cup winner with France at 19 years of age, joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 on a free transfer, which seemed like a ridiculously good business move for the club. He finished his first season by winning the European Golden Boot Award. This season, his frenetic goalscoring hasn’t slowed down – in 41 games for Real Madrid, he’s banged in 41 goals. But Mbappé has become a problem.

Pedrerol lamented the situation. Forsaking the histrionics that is the show’s normal tenor, he spoke with a calm, mystifying tone, which stoked the drama. He recalled how Mbappé’s arrival was like a dream for Real Madrid’s supporters. After a courtship that went back a decade, the best player in the world had finally arrived, which made everything sweeter.

“He’s good. No doubt. He scores 50 goals [a season],” said Pedrerol, toying with his viewers, before slipping in the knife, clarifying that Mbappé’s lack of “commitment” has been “a letdown”. He said it with a despairing air, adding, “They say he hasn’t integrated in Madrid. Now he’s in Madrid, he goes to Paris. It’s disappointing that Mbappé isn’t Mbappé.”

What precipitated the debate was that a couple of hours earlier that night, Mbappé had just returned from Sardinia. Minutes before his Real Madrid team-mates kicked off in a league game away to Espanyol in Barcelona, Mbappé was descending the steps of his private plane 600 miles away in Madrid, having spent a few days lolling off the coast of Italy on a yacht with his new girlfriend, the Spanish actress Ester Expósito.

Mbappé is nursing a hamstring injury. He was up front with the club about his movements while recuperating, but the optics looked awful, infuriating fans and some team-mates. At Real Madrid, appearance is everything. The club’s legendary goalscorer Raúl said he often used to chase after the ball at the Bernabéu, knowing he wouldn’t get it, just to give the illusion to his fans that he never gave up, that he was a team player.

Mbappé isn’t playing that game. It’s not in his nature. He doesn’t do solidarity well. He has an ego the size of the Eiffel Tower. In footballing terms, this takes expression in his obsession with his goalscoring statistics, which drove him to play through injury last December in a vainglorious attempt to break Cristiano Ronaldo’s calendar-year goalscoring record for Real Madrid. Mbappé equalled the 59-goal haul, but has struggled with fitness since.

His instinct to think of himself first, and the team second, which is galling for Real Madrid’s fans. A #Mbappéout petition, generated to discredit him, has garnered tens of millions of “signatures” online. Mbappé’s relationship with fans can be fixed. All that needs to happen – for a connection to grow between Mbappé and madridismo – is that he helps Real Madrid to start winning trophies again.

Mbappé is the source of a great conundrum. He’s this season’s top scorer in the Champions League. Despite his goals, he has made Real Madrid worse. On arrival, Real Madrid were reigning La Liga and Champions League title holders. Now the club is about to go two seasons trophyless for the first time in 20 years. Club directors knew they risked forfeiting 15 goals a season, given his defensive lethargy, by adding him to the team, but gambled it was worth it for his goalscoring and marketing appeal. It felt right that the world’s best player played for the world’s biggest club.

The problem is that Mbappé has unbalanced the team. The club already had two world-class left-sided attacking players, Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo Goes. To fit in, Mbappé has played in a central role, which meant Jude Bellingham had to forsake the free-scoring “false nine” role he played in his first, sensational season with the club.

Mbappé also drifts to the left, compromising the space Vini Jr occupies. Much is made of the lack of on-field connection between the pair (and their reluctance to defend). There is an ongoing media debate, mulling over the question of state: “Are Mbappé and Vini jnr compatible?” Tellingly, according to L’Équipe, Real Madrid scores more goals when Vini Jr is alone on the pitch (2.83 per game) compared with both of them on the field together (1.89 per game), a feeling typified by two golazos Vini Jr scored in Real Madrid’s 2-0 defeat of Espanyol last weekend.

But at least they haven’t come to blows. Yet. Over the last few weeks, Valdebebas, Real Madrid’s training ground, has descended into anarchy. The threat of violence that hangs in the air there is like a prison yard. Every other day brings a story of players fighting with each other, or at loggerheads their beleaguered coach, Álvaro Arbeloa, who took over midseason after Xabi Alonso was sacked.

Arbeloa is a man completely at sea. Six of Real Madrid’s players, according to Marca, aren’t speaking to him, including team captain Dani Carvajal, Dani Cebellos, Raúl Asencio and Álvaro Carreras. A couple of weeks ago at Valdebebas, Carreras had a fight with team-mate Antonio Rüdiger in which Rüdiger slapped him in the dressingroom, dredging up memories of an ugly incident in 2024 when Rüdiger was caught on camera slapping Real Madrid’s kitman, Manolín, during a training session.

Thursday will go down as a day of infamy at Real Madrid. A fight broke out between team-mates Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni. The row had been simmering from the previous day. Upon arriving at training, Valverde refused to shake Tchouaméni’s hand. Valverde blamed him for leaking news about their argument to the press. Tchouaméni denied the accusation, stressing he was a private person who doesn’t engage with the press.

During training, Valverde kept insisting that Tchouaméni was a mole. Valverde and Tchouaméni exchanged a few rough tackles. After the training session ended, Valverde wouldn’t let it go, badgering Tchouaméni, with a vehemence that was “incessant”, according to Diario AS.

Tchouaméni squared up to Valverde, calmly telling him to stop whining. Valverde wouldn’t. Some team-mates tried to intervene. Valverde still wouldn’t relent. Tchouaméni had had enough. The exchanges got physical and Valverde was knocked to the ground. While falling, Valverde hit his head off a table. He left the dressingroom in a wheelchair and was taken to hospital where his head wound was patched up with stitches.

Real Madrid have fined Valverde and Tchouaméni €500,000 each following their training-ground altercation. It’s clear that a new sheriff is needed in town. Arbeloa will be replaced in the summer. And the frontrunner to take over from him is ... José Mourinho, a long-time favourite of club president Florentino Pérez. The last time Mourinho was in charge at Real Madrid, he boasted gleefully that he enjoys “adding pepper to the fun”. This was in the context of an epic rivalry with Pep Guardiola’s Barça during peak Messi v Ronaldo showdowns.

In the short-term, Real Madrid must rally their squad for Sunday’s clásico against Barça at the Camp Nou. All eyes will be on Mbappé, who is in a race to be fit. (Valverde sidelined due to concussion protocol will miss the match.) Their ancient Catalan rivals are aiming to make history by clinching La Liga for the first time on home soil. A draw will suffice. Real Madrid will be desperate to spoil the party, and to restore some pride to their battered image.

La Liga: Barcelona v Real Madrid, Camp Nou, Sunday, 8pm (Live on Premier Sports)

Cantera v Cartera

Money doesn’t always buy success. Sport, one of Barcelona’s sports newspapers, once coined the term “cantera versus cartera” (academy v wallet) to capture Barça and Real Madrid’s ideological differences. Barcelona’s president Joan Laporta used to like saying that Real Madrid buys Ballon d’Or players whereas Barcelona makes them.

This was when three of Barça’s homegrown players, Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, graced the Ballon d’Or podium in January 2011, a time when Real Madrid had just spent north of €200 million in transfer fees on its Ballon d’Or stars, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká and (future winner) Karim Benzema.

We are back at those times. This season, Real Madrid splurged €167.5 million net on their squad, bringing in players such as Dean Huijsen, Álvaro Carreras, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Franco Mastantuono. They are yet to prosper.

In comparison, Barça – after several seasons struggling to comply with La Liga’s strict financial fair play regulations – spent approximately €25 million net, enough for them to romp towards the title. They’re on course for a record-equalling 100-point season, with a starting XI that regularly features at least six players from their vaunted youth academy, known the world over as La Masia.

These include Eric Garcia, Alejandro Balde, Gerard Martín, Fermín López, Marc Casadó, Gavi, Dani Olmo and three players from “the class of 2007,” graduates from La Masia born that year – Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí and Marc Bernal, a trident which evokes memories of the famous “generation of ’87”, which included Messi, Gerard Piqué and Cesc Fàbregas.

In April, for the first time in history, Real Madrid fielded a starting XI in the Champions League without a Spanish player. Ironically, given its production line is faulty, its youth academy is called La Fábrica (The Factory).

Click here to read article