Mbappe’s sights are fixed on club and country but a Ballon d’Or?

Through the security barriers, past all the pristine playing fields and neatly kept borders, the entrance to Real Madrid’s training ground is dominated by murals of its unrivaled European Cup collection. Fifteen, in total, from Paris in 1956 to London in 2024.

An interview room features more pictorial reminders that this is no ordinary club. One wall is taken over by a huge image of the sleek, newly transformed Bernabéu stadium. Another shows a montage of past glories, with various trophies held to the skies.

Then the door opens. Kylian Mbappé walks in — black T-shirt, gray pleated trousers billowing over his shoes — and the energy changes immediately. A smile, a handshake. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Did you have a nice flight?”

He is, in many people’s eyes, the best soccer player on the planet, a goal scorer extraordinaire with a level of fame that, as he will try to explain, is almost incomprehensible. But it doesn’t take long in Mbappé’s company to be reminded that, at the heart of everything, he is still a soccer romantic, playing for the team he idolized as a boy.

He takes his seat beneath the Wall of Fame and looks up at the icons all around him. Cristiano Ronaldo is holding up five fingers to signify his personal haul of Champions League wins.

There’s a Hugo Sánchez bicycle kick, a Pepe fist-pump, a José Mourinho knee slide. “History,” Mbappé said. “Famous history.”

And so we start talking about his own history, his fame, the goals, his back-to-back Golden Boots in the World Cup and how it feels, at the age of 27, to be the leading career scorer in the biggest sporting competition of them all.

First, though, maybe we can learn a bit more about Mbappé by understanding why he is able to answer these questions in fluent English. “I always wanted to speak different languages,” he said. “It’s fun to learn a new culture. You can talk with everybody around the world and be independent. You don’t need to depend on someone translating.”

He now speaks excellent Spanish, too, and he is picking up some Portuguese and Italian. But it wasn’t at school that he dedicated himself to being multilingual. That came later, as he became conscious of its benefits if, as he fully intended, he was to conquer the world.

As a boy, growing up in a northern suburb of Paris, it was obvious that his life would be shaped by soccer. Mbappé’s bedroom was decorated with posters of Ronaldo.

Yet his first hero was Zinedine Zidane, and his real love was always Real Madrid. The young Mbappé wanted to emulate his hero, to play like him, to do the Zidane turn and even look like him.

Zidane is now the head coach of the France national team, taking over a squad that was widely seen as the favorite to win this summer’s World Cup, only to come up short against Spain in the semifinals.

“We did three World Cups — two finals, one semifinal,” Mbappé said of his nine years with Didier Deschamps, the previous manager.

“It’s about details. And we were not ready in every detail to make the World Cup,” he said about this year’s team. “You have to be ready at the moment. When you’re not, someone else takes your seat.”

Mbappé has 22 goals in 22 World Cup games. Ten of his goals came in this summer’s competition, and nobody can accuse him of exaggeration when he points out that “they were great goals.”

“I always wanted to break records and that people remembered my name,” he said. “But I have to be honest, I didn’t expect to be the top scorer of all time at the World Cup, at 27.

“The World Cup is the competition of the big stars, the biggest players in the history of the game. I used to dream about playing in this competition — not even winning it, just playing — so it’s completely crazy to be that man.”

In the process, Mbappé has established himself as France’s top career scorer, with 66 goals in 106 appearances. That, he said, was always a target. But can he reach 100?

“The problem I have is there are two guys who have shown it is possible,” he said, speaking of Ronaldo for Portugal and Lionel Messi for Argentina. “If you’d asked me before, I would have told you no. But now, they have shown the way. So why not?”

He is entitled to that confidence when, in Mourinho’s words, he is playing soccer “on a stratospheric level.” Add in the 42 goals Mbappé scored for Madrid in 44 games last season, and it is easy to understand why many people, Mourinho included, have nominated him as a worthy recipient of the Ballon d’Or, which will be awarded on Monday.

It is not, Mbappé said, “an obsession.” Equally, he would be thrilled to get his hands on the trophy.

“I have never said, ‘I’m going to win it,’” he said. “But I think I had a good year. Many people have said I had a good year and connected me with the trophy. So let’s see what can happen.”

Mbappé was a six-time Ligue 1 champion for Paris Saint-Germain, winning 15 trophies before his move to Madrid in 2024. Is there ever a pang of envy about what he left behind in France?

Did he watch his former team win back-to-back Champions League titles in the two years since his departure and think it could have been him lifting the trophy?

“Could be! Could be!” he said, smiling. “But no. I’d arrived at the end of an era. I did seven years. We had a final, semifinals, quarterfinals. But it was time to go, and they moved on to something else. They bought six or seven players and changed everything. And they won. Congratulations to them.

“But when I took the decision to leave PSG, my time was up. I did everything I could, and I think I did great. But I wanted to realize my dream, to play for Real Madrid, and at the age of 25, that was the best time. For me, it was the best decision.”

Mbappé talks enthusiastically about living in Madrid, the challenges of playing for a club with such unflinching expectations, and life in general. It is, he said, “good pressure.” He is happy.

Kylian Mbappé loves being Kylian Mbappé.

He also said, more than once, that he just loves soccer. His eyes light up when he remembers Pelé giving him a signed shirt (“an iconic moment”), and he talks boyishly about some of the others in his collection.

“Some of the best players in the history of football,” he said. “I still have this passion. The jerseys are iconic. Messi, Cristiano, Neymar, Ibrahimovic — everybody!”

His burning ambition is to win another World Cup because “there is no bigger achievement.” He fell in love with the tournament at age 7, watching France reach the 2006 final. “You’re a kid and you say, ‘Yeah I want to be there one day, I want to play this type of game, the adrenaline, the atmosphere.’”

Can he also do something great with Madrid? He is acutely aware that “everybody expects something from us,” after two years without a major trophy. He and his teammates are “hungry,”

he said, and “can’t wait to fight for every title.”

He remains hopeful, and his first impressions of Mourinho have been positive. “Way before he arrived here, I was really curious about him because he’s been one of the main characters in world football in the last 20 to 25 years,” he said. “When a guy like this arrives at your club, you can’t wait to see from close up what greatness means.”

We have been speaking for the best part of an hour, and it is almost time to wrap everything up. Before heading home, however, something has caught Mbappé’s eye.

The photographs on the wall show Madrid’s previous Ballon d’Or winners. Eight of them: Alfredo Di Stéfano, Raymond Kopa, Luís Figo, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Fabio Cannavaro, Luka Modric, Karim Benzema and, of course, one other.

Mbappé rises from his chair to point out Cristiano Ronaldo — bow tie, big smile, clutching the golden trophy he won five times — and it hasn’t escaped his attention that the wall has not been updated for a couple of years. His smile is on full beam.

“Who knows? Maybe my picture will be there soon. It’s time, it’s time! Maybe this year is a good year for that.”