Real Madrid superstar center forward Kylian Mbappe picked up three prestigious individual trophies in his first two seasons with the European Golden Boot and the Pichichi in his first season and then the Pichichi again as La Liga's leading goal scorer in the 2025/26 season. But after joining a team that won the 2023/24 Champions League and leaving a PSG side that had never won the Champions League, Real Madrid have been trophy less since Mbappe's arrival while PSG are on the cusp of a three peat.
Los Blancos are going to ask a lot more from Mbappe in terms of his all around game next season, and if Mbappe thought that Luis Enrique could be harsh with him in Paris, then he will have to deal with an entirely different beast in the legendary Jose Mourinho, who is back in the Madrid dugout as Florentino Perez's personal pick to save the club from back to back trophy less seasons again.
There is a prevailing belief that Mourinho will have to, like Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa last season, choose between building the team around Kylian Mbappe or Vinicius Junior, and there are obviously plenty of Real Madrid fans with strong opinions on either player.
And it won't be Vinicius Jr. either
But according to a report from Jose Felix Diaz of Diario AS, via the Madrid Zone, many people within the building at Real Madrid are actually convinced that the Galactico Jose Mourinho wants to build the team around is not a forward but rather the center midfielder Jude Bellingham.
Mourinho has waxed poetic about Bellingham in the past, and Bellingham is used to being the centerpiece player of successful teams. He nearly dragged Borussia Dortmund to a Bundesliga title and England to a European Championship, and anyone who actually watched the full 2023/24 season knows that it was Jude Bellingham - and not Vinicius Junior - who was the team's best and most consistent player that made that entire formation without a striker work.
Bellingham, like the others, is a player who gets a lot of flack from the media for his attitude, but what is insane about all that is Bellingham works 100 times harder than anyone else on England or Real Madrid - and he does have some very hard workers around him like Fede Valverde and Harry Kane on both teams.
Building Real Madrid around Bellingham over Mbappe and Vinicius makes a lot of sense. Bellingham has a better work rate, influence, and all around game than both players, he works harder than them, he has better leadership traits, and, at his peak, he has outplayed both when Madrid actually used him right in 2023/24.
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