- Close
ESPN.com writer- Ryan O'Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He's also the author of "Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution."
Kylian Mbappé is ... back? Right? Kinda? Maybe? Sorta?
The first couple months of Mbappé at Real Madrid went about as poorly as anyone could've reasonably expected. He racked up a record eight offsides in Madrid's 4-0 home defeat against Barcelona in late October. And then, a month later, there was his one shot attempted -- a penalty, which he missed -- in an uncompetitive 2-0 loss to Liverpool at Anfield.
Sure, he had scored 10 goals in his first 21 Champions League and LaLiga matches with his new club, but take away the penalties and Mbappé had just seven goals by Christmas. When arguably the best player in the world joins the supposed best team in the world, a non-penalty goal every three games is pretty much the worst-case scenario.
Except, since coming back from the holiday break, Mbappé started to look a little more like we all expected. It only took him nine matches after Christmas to score seven more non-penalty goals. But then, of course, he went scoreless over his past two, including last weekend's shock 1-0 loss to Espanyol.
Plus, he hasn't exactly been beating up on elite competition over the past month-plus. Outside of a goal in Madrid's 5-2 loss to Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup, everything else came against either FC Salzburg, who posted the worst goal differential of any team in the Champions League's brand-new league phase, or bottom-half-of-the-table teams in Spain.
So, ahead of this weekend's top-of-the-table clash between Real Madrid and intra-city rivals Atlético Madrid -- stream live on ESPN+, Saturday, 3 p.m. ET -- Alex Kirkland and Ryan O'Hanlon team up to figure out why Mbappé struggled so much over the first half of the season, what has driven his recent improvement, and whether we should expect to see the Mbappé of old for the rest of the season.
