Kylian Mbappe did not play for Real Madrid vs. Barcelona on Sunday night after pulling up in the final practice session before the game with just minutes remaining with an apparent aggravation of an injury that was initially reported to be season ending but then saw the Frenchman return to training after backlash from photos of him vacationing in Italy.
Naturally, if Mbappe suffered an injury just a few days before, the Real Madrid marksman would not be ready to start for Real Madrid vs. Real Oviedo on Thursday night in La Liga. So Alvaro Arbeloa had him coming off the bench for young sriker Gonzalo Garcia, who made the most of his opportunity with a Man of the Match performance.
But Mbappe had to make the moment about him, forcing an impromptu meeting with the press after the game to criticize his teammates for losing the Copa del Rey without him and throw Arbeloa under the bus while basically insinuating that he should have started, thus implying he was never injured before the Clasico to begin with.
Kylian Mbappe has it all wrong
And to rub more salt in the wound - or, perhaps, to wound himself with a shaker of salt - Mbappe made this bizarre comment about his Clasico record. The striker said, via Madrid Xtra, “I love playing in El Clásico. I always score against them. But that’s life.”
Well, well, well, this quote is quite bizarre on several fronts. First of all, everyone was under the impression Kylian Mbappe could not have possibly played in the Clasico because of an injury. So if this is part of his tirade against Alvaro Arbeloa and if that "but that's life" is taken as a shot at the manager, then perhaps it is true that he only pulled out injured because he realized he would not be starting the Clasico, which, of course, was the case because Real Madrid were under the assumption he was vactioning in Italy because he was injured. But does that just mean the injury was a ruse and he was taking it easy before the World Cup?
We may never know. But what we do know is this. Just like the old tweet from his Monaco days surfaced of him congratulating his assists in a defeat, Mbappe seems more pleased with himself for his empty calorie goals in the Clasicos than the fact that Real Madrid have lost six of the seven Classics they have played against Barcelona since his arrival after previously dominating the Blaugrana head to head in the previous years. Mbappe has a less than 20 percent winning percentage in El Clasico. Of course, when the player's priority is his own stats and not winning, that's the sort of Freudian slip that emerges.
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