Kylian Mbappe is intent on leaving Paris Saint-Germain with a bang.
Following his performance in the Champions League quarter-final second leg against Barcelona a week earlier, when he scored twice to secure a semi-final tie against Borussia Dortmund, Mbappe continued his goalscoring spree on Wednesday evening, adding another couple to his tally in a 4-1 away win over Lorient.
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Not only did that result put PSG on the brink of their 10th Ligue 1 title in 12 years, needing just one win from their remaining four matches, but those were also Mbappe’s 254th and 255th goals for the club. That is more than anyone has ever scored for Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, AC Milan, Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, or PSG’s biggest domestic rivals Marseille.
Considering the legendary forwards who have spent their best years at those clubs, Mbappe achieving this feat at the age of 25, having already played an important role in winning a French league title with Monaco as an 18-year-old, is very impressive.
If competing for every trophy and sweeping up every accolade before he departs his hometown Paris this summer, with most observers expecting him to join Real Madrid, is not enough to convince you of Mbappe’s status as the best footballer in the world, perhaps the quality of his goal contributions will.
His first goal against Lorient, PSG’s second on the night, was excellent.
This flick from Kylian Mbappe 🤯
Did he mean it? 👀
📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/G8ZAwM6yCD
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) April 24, 2024
After releasing left-back Nuno Mendes into the penalty area with a chipped through pass, he darted from outside the box towards the six-yard line before Mendes played a square ball slightly behind him.
Needing to adjust to get an effort on target, Mbappe changed his body shape, brought his left foot behind the ball in one swift movement, and flicked a shot towards the far corner.
Mbappe appeared to generate enough spin to direct the ball into the net despite it looking to be heading wide of the post when he made contact.
“‘Did he mean it?’ — of course he meant it. Unbelievable finish,” Clive Allen, a prolific striker for clubs including Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea in the 1980s, said in commentary for TNT Sports, Ligue 1’s primary broadcaster in the United Kingdom.
If that was an “unbelievable” piece of skill, few superlatives will do justice to what Mbappe produced in the 59th minute.
KYLIAN MBAPPE 👏👏
The PSG star produces a moment of magic to set-up Ousmane Dembele for his 2⃣nd goal of the evening! pic.twitter.com/nQgtFs7UKt
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) April 24, 2024
Chasing a ball down PSG’s left wing, he appears to be heading down a dead end.
Goncalo Ramos, who led the line for the visitors, is his closest team-mate, but still around 20 yards away, and Mbappe has a Lorient defender in close pursuit.
With little support, Mbappe performs an inverted stepover with his right foot, causing Lorient’s Nathaniel Adjei to lose his balance momentarily. This slight defensive adjustment — with Adjei probably trying to win the ball early to avoid ending up in a race with Mbappe, one of the fastest players in European football — gives the Frenchman a second to drag the ball back and face up to his marker near the byline (the horizontal line from the corner flag to the goal).
Given the threat Mbappe poses from almost any position in the final third, Adjei is understandably keen to put a tackle in and extends his left leg towards the ball in an attempt to win it. According to former West Bromwich Albion and Sweden defender Jonas Olsson, this is where he makes his first mistake.
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“The defender is just a bit too aggressive,” Olsson tells The Athletic. “The most important thing is not to go for the ball too early. I can see why he sticks his foot out — Mbappe is so far down the line and thinks he has him, but he just needs to stay solid and stand his ground.”
To every Sunday League amateur-level coach who has ever shouted at a full-back to jockey their man towards the corner flag, we hear you.
What happens next is why you should always approach sticking a foot in against any tricky attacker with extreme caution.
While Adjei stuck out his leg, Mbappe dragged the ball away from the Lorient defender and closer to him, opening up a yard of separation. After rolling the ball back with his right foot, Mbappe knocked it to his left foot, which is touching the byline.
Adjei then stretches his right leg out to prevent Mbappe attempting to knock the ball along the byline to run around him — leaving Adjei with space open between his legs.
Mbappe notices this gap and taps the ball with his left foot back to his right before knocking it through Adjei’s legs.
With Adjei off balance, Mbappe shrugs him off easily before taking a touch inside the box and delivering a side-footed cross along the floor to the unmarked Ousmane Dembele, who taps in at the far post.
In the aftermath, commentators Allen and Jonathan Pearce described Mbappe’s moment of magic as “brilliant”, “absolutely astounding”, “utter genius”, “absolutely magnificent”, “superb” and “out of this world”.
While any defender in the sport can fall victim to Mbappe’s brilliance, Adjei will not want to look back at his decision to stick out a leg, particularly as he was in a good position to keep the PSG forward well away from goal.
“As a defender, you always need to evaluate where you are on the pitch,” Olsson says. “When I played against Cristiano Ronaldo, and he was running straight towards you down the middle of the pitch near the goal, you had to engage. That might even risk cutting him down. The same is true with a player like Eden Hazard. But here, he is near the byline.
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“I always say, ‘Treat the byline like an extra defender’. He (Adjei) has a favourable position, and Mbappe wants the defender to dive in. When he brings the ball back with his sole, that’s his way of asking the defender to commit. Roy Hodgson (former England, Liverpool, Inter Milan and West Brom manager) used to say, ‘Sometimes you have to let the attacker have the ball as a defender, because the most important thing is to protect your goal’.”
Mbappe rounded off his stellar evening with a second goal in second-half stoppage time, coolly placing a shot into the bottom right corner from the edge of the box.
With less than a month remaining of the season, he will be keen to ensure his defining moment in a PSG shirt is still yet to come.
To Adjei, we offer our condolences. But you’re not the first Mbappe victim, and surely you will not be the last.
