PSG and Real Madrid - A tale of two teams

Track your mind back, if you can, to 2022. The Champions League Round of 16 stage. Los Blancos, one of the world’s most iconic clubs, against the ‘Hollywood club’ PSG. Madrid, while still having lots of talent - Karim Benzema in his career season, Vini in his breakout season, an emerging Valverde, Militao and Camavinga, as well as older talent from their old Galacticos era like Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, they still weren’t at the level of the old Ronaldo-era Madrid sides. Meanwhile, PSG had one of the most star-studded teams in football history. A front three of Neymar, Messi, and Kylian Mbappe, Verratti, Marquinhos, Hakimi, Donnarumma behind them and enough talent to leave names like Icardi, Navas, Wijnaldum, and Di Maria on the bench. While the PSG side had the names, they were completely disjointed, and at the Bernabeu in the second leg, collapsed completely as Madrid came back from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 after a Karim Benzema hattrick. Mistakes by Donnarumma and Marquinhos contributed heavily to the comeback, and proved that togetherness, a great system, and a team that can work together incredibly well beats disjointed stars playing for themselves. 

3 years later, we find the roles completely reversed. In the Club World Cup semifinals, it was PSG the incredibly well oiled machine, demolishing the Madrid team of disjointed stars, 4-0. Madrid were the ones making massive mistakes, both Asencio and Rudiger fumbling easy situations inside the first 10 minutes, and PSG powering through to the final. Today we cover the incredible situation that led to this, Madrid’s decline, PSG’s rise, and the unfortunate Frenchman at the center of it all, who’s been on the wrong side of history both times. 

That unfortunate Frenchman goes by the name of Kylian Mbappe. You might have heard of him. From his meteoric rise at Monaco, nearly nine whole years ago now, he’s become one of the world’s best footballers. For a time, he was even considered the best. If Kylian Mbappe retired today, it would be a massive question on how we looked back on his footballing career. He’d likely be a top 50 player in football history, likely being held in the same respect as a player like Wayne Rooney or Gianni Rivera. However, his international legacy would be much different than his club career. For France, he won the World Cup in 2018, and made it to the final in 2022, tying Antoine Griezmann in 2018 for Top Scorer in the squad with 4, and winning the tournament golden boot in 2022 with 8 goals, 3 coming in the final loss to Argentina. His 12 World Cup goals put him on par with Pele for the 6th most World Cup goals by a player, and it took Pele 4 World Cups to reach that, compared to Mbappe’s 2. The only other players who can boast that is Gerd Muller, reaching 14 goals in 2 tournaments, and Just Fontaine, with 13 goals in one. In recent times, nobody’s come close. 

However, his club career is completely different. Mbappe was supposed to be this generation’s god, the player that football revolved around. It didn’t help his expectations that he came into football at a time that Messi and Ronaldo were at their twilights, and football was desperate to find new Messis and Ronaldos. However, 8 years after his move to PSG, and making it to football’s big stage, Mbappe hasn’t won more at the club level than some French trophies which he was favourite for anyway, and a UEFA Supercup and Intercontinenal Cup that his club qualified for before he joined. The most impressive trophy he’s won is still the 2017 Ligue 1 title with Monaco. All this has translated into much failure for the Ballon D’Ors he was supposed to win in droves. He was supposed to have won at least two by now, but while players like Rodri have won it, youngsters like Yamal are in the running, and even his old French national team rival, who he’d seemingly beaten the comparisons to years ago, Ousmane Dembele, is favoured to now win it before him. Mbappe’s only been on the podium once, the same number of times he’s been in the Champions League final. And lost it.

I say all this because Mbappe’s had a chip on his shoulder for a long time. And this exact chip on his shoulder has been instrumental to this story. Let’s get into it.

PSG’s rise since 2022 has been meteoric. And it was never even supposed to be. In the three years since the Madrid comeback, PSG have only kept 5 players from their squad of 28 that year, and only 4 who’ve played big roles this year. The change started in 2022, after Luis Campos took over as PSG sporting director. He did something unprecedented - he didn’t sign any massive stars. He started making smart signings, triggering the buy option on Nuno Mendes’ loan, signing Vitinha, Fabian Ruiz, Carlos Soler, Renato Sanches, among other smaller pieces. Much of the riffraff started to go in his first year, such as Di Maria and Idrissa Gueye, but the PSG board still wanted to give the superteam one last chance in 2023. It didn’t work, losing in the Round of 16 to Bayern, and PSG had finally had enough. It was time for Campos, who assembled the Monaco team that made the UCL semis in 2017 to work his magic fully with PSG.

It started with the hiring of Luis Enrique in the summer of 2023, after Cristophe Galtier’s departure in an unsuccessful 2022/23. Despite little success for Lucho at the 2021 Euros and 2022 World Cup with Spain, PSG saw his potential, bringing Barca incredible success with a 2015 treble and their only Champions League post-Pep. 

Then, the transfers started a new era for PSG. Out the door was an incredible amount of talent. Leo Messi and Sergio Ramos left for free, Neymar left for 90 million, Marco Verratti left for 45 million, Gini Wijnaldum left for 8 million, Mauro Icardi left for 10 million, and the signings were, interesting. PSG spent over 450 million, on Randal Kolo Muani, Goncalo Ramos, Manu Ugarte, Lucas Hernandez, Lee Kang-In, Milan Skriniar, and others. Their two most interesting signings, however, were the ones of Ousmane Dembele and Bradley Barcola, brought in for just around 95 million combined from Lyon and Barcelona. These changes fully ushered in the new era for PSG. 

PSG had some great success in 2023/24, winning the French treble, and beating Barcelona 4-1 in Spain in the Champions League quarterfinals to progress to the semifinals. However, Kylian Mbappe still couldn’t take the team past Dortmund, losing 2-0 on aggregate after hitting the post 4 times across both legs. This was enough for Kylian Mbappe, who left for Madrid after the season. Little did we know, that was what finally saw the last part of Campos’ vision come to fruition.

In 2024, we saw the departures of Manu Ugarte, Hugo Ekitike, and Danilo Pereira as well as Kylian Mbappe, and PSG’s signings were incredible. In the summer, they signed a big three of Joao Neves, Willian Pacho, and wonderkid Desire Doue. In January, they signed Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to pair with them, just an insane hit rate. All four are crucial in PSG’s side. 

In 24/25, PSG finally hit their stride. Finally a unit together, Enrique had the youngsters firing at all cylinders, especially after the New Year. Despite not having many major names, they fired past a City team with Haaland, a Premier League-winning Liverpool side, an Arsenal side who just beat Real Madrid, and beat one of the best defensive teams in the world, Inter, 5-0 in the Champions League final. In the Club World Cup, the great form continued, beating Atleti 4-0, Bayern 2-0, and winning 4-0 against

Real Madrid. The team who’ve had an exactly opposite 3 years to PSG. In 2022, they were the ones doing better than the sum of their parts, led by Karim Benzema, and winning the Champions League and La Liga, admittedly in a weakened La Liga. The team saw many players break out into world class stars in Ancelotti’s first season, most notably Vinicius Jr, who had his first World Class season before becoming one of the faces of the new Madrid era. Rodrygo also broke out, coming through on his potential and providing one of the recent UCL’s most iconic moments, scoring two late goals in the semifinals against Man City to level it 5-5 on aggregate and take it to extra time, which Madrid would win. In the summer of 2022, few wholesale changes would take place, but a changing of the guard happened in defensive midfield, Casemiro being sold and being replaced with Aurelien Tchouameni. Antonio Rudiger was also signed to improve the defence, and he made a great improvement into one of the world’s best centerbacks with Madrid.

22/23 didn’t have the same success as the year before, Madrid losing the league to Barca and losing the UCL to City, but they did win the Copa del Rey, beating Barcelona 4-0 in a comeback semifinal win, after losing 1-0 at the Bernabeu, and going on to beat Osasuna in the final. Obviously, Madrid needed some extra flair, pizzazz if you will, for 23/24. 

In the summer 2023 window, they found that extra something. Along with the signings of Arda Guler, Fran Garcia, Kepa and Joselu on loan, and Brahim Diaz coming back from loan, Madrid signed Jude Bellingham from Dortmund for over 100 million euros. 

The window paid off, and like 2022, Madrid once again won the Champions League, albeit with lots of controversy along the way, and La Liga, the only thing stopping the treble being a Copa del Rey loss in extra time to Atlético Madrid. Jude Bellingham was the star of the show, winning tons of media and fan plaudits as he scored 23 and assisted 13 across all comps. 

It looked fine, and was fine up to this point, but we saw a certain signing in 2024 that flipped the entire script of the Madrid that we’d known so far in the last few seasons. A certain Frenchman, who we covered earlier. Him, as well as Endrick’s signing, along with much of the old guard that kept the youngsters in check, such as Karim Benzema, Toni Kroos, Marcelo and more created a disaster for Madrid in 24/25. Barca were finally back, under Hansi Flick, and were a much more cohesive unit than Madrid would ever hope to be. Not only would Barcelona sweep all 3 domestic trophies, but would win all four Clasicos that season, scoring four past Los Blancos in three of them. Madrid would also have their worst finish in the Champions League since 2020, knocked out in the quarterfinals against Arsenal. 

That brings us to this summer. PSG, a cohesive unit, better than the sum of their parts, and even after the loss to Chelsea, still likely football’s best club. And Real Madrid, the club where players fight for themselves, and prioritize signing stars like Kylian Mbappe than keeping major pieces like Rodygo. Going into 25/26, this contrast will be one of the major stories of the season, and I cannot wait to see how it unfolds. Right now though, these teams are at two opposite ends of the spectrum.