Kylian Mbappé became the youngest player to reach 100 Champions League appearances, surpassing Lionel Messi during Real Madrid's 4-3 win against Roma on Wednesday.
Mbappé scored one goal in the game against Roma, but was pretty poor outside of it. Luckily for him, the substitutes took care of business and ended up launching a huge comeback to win from a two-goal deficit.
Even after setting foot on the pitch at 27 years and 298 days old, he became the youngest player to reach 100 games in the competition. Lionel Messi, who was second, was 28 years and 84 days old, while number three goes to Raul, who was 28 years and 239 days old.
Lionel Messi already had three Champions League titles by this point
He is a very good individual record, but everyone would have expected Mbappé to have at least one Champions League by now. In comparison, Messi had already won three Champions Leagues by the time he made his 100th appearance. Soon after that, he also won his fourth Champions League title in 2015.
Mbappé, despite being only 100 days or so younger to be in this position, has not won a single Champions League title yet, despite being in the final once and being in the semi-final a couple of times. Now, fans would have expected that to change when Mbappé was still in his formative years, or maybe when he was in his early 20s. As more time has gone on, it has seemed more unlikely for Mbappé to win the elusive Champions League title.
He was not able to win anything with PSG. He reached the final once, but was not able to do anything after that. At his new club, ever since he joined, Real Madrid have not made it past the quarter-final stage. The hope, obviously, is that that happens this season, and Real Madrid are finally able to win their 16th Champions League title, and Mbappé wins his first. It does not seem like it will happen, though, based on the way the team is playing so far.
It remains to be seen what happens by the end of the season, and it is a very good statistic to have for a player like Mbappé. It will probably be broken by Lamine Yamal at some point, but in the end, what matters is the number of titles that you win, rather than the number of appearances that you make without winning one, a single one. Hopefully for Mbappé, that changes soon.
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