Kylian Mbappe has scored 24 goals in La Liga this season with an additional 15 goals in the Champions League. His personal numbers since joining Real Madrid, even beyond the goals, have been outstanding, and there are times when he does things on the pitch that even his other illustrious teammates simply cannot do.
But Real Madrid fans are not phased whenever you bring up the gaudy statistics. They don't even blink. Not only have they seen them before, albeit even bigger, from the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, but club's with a winning tradition as strong as Madrid's have never been about one individual's stats.
Real Madrid fans are thoroughly unimpressed with the numbers, because they see right through the conundrum that Mbappe has always presented. With Mbappe, you can get a great individual player with skill, pace, technique, and all the characteristics that look beautiful on a FIFA card. But you won't win. You won't be able to beat the best teams in the world head to head, and you will fall short in the Champions League, as Real Madrid suddenly have.
Kylian Mbappe has the numbers but nothing else
This is a vulnerable Real Madrid that cannot win, now two years in a row, and that is deeply concerning to them. And though Florentino Perez will believe in the pet project he signed and was obsessed with signing from Nasser Al-Khelaifi and PSG, the fans only see that as a reenforcement of the conundrum.
Perez will point to Mbappe's goals and even his key passes and dribbles completed as evidence of him being a great player - and even a team player. He and the Mbappe supporters, who are now much fewer in number and only the most loyal, will say it is impossible for someone with these stats to be the problem.
And, of course, Real Madrid have other problems. The defense, to wit, stinks. Yet it is difficult to deny the fact that Real Madrid's highest paid player is a large part of the problem when Real were fluid and the best team in the world before his arrival - and they are now not even able to compete with a mildly disappointing Barcelona in their own league.
Kylian Mbappe has the goals, the highlights, the statistics, and the skill. But he cannot play as a teammate. When the finest of margins make all the difference against a Bayern Munich or a Barcelona, a team with Mbappe will consistently fall short, and even if it seems inexplicable, he becomes the common denominator that eventually cannot be ignored. Just ask PSG.
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