Throwback Thursday: Kylian Mbappe’s breakout season at Monaco

 


Following the world record bid sent to PSG for Kylian Mbappe from Al Hilal earlier this week, which would be the highest ever for a player, we’re going to take a look back at Mbappe’s breakout season and why he was such a sought after player after the stunning Monaco campaign of 2016/17.

 

Going into the 2016/17 season, having finished third the previous campaign, “Les Rouge et Blanc” had reached the Champions League play-offs, the same stage where they lost out the previous season to Valencia, they had a strong squad that had been improved on from the previous year. 

 

They had the likes of Fabinho, Joao Moutinho, Radamel Falcao, Bernardo Silva, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Thomas Lemar and Kylian Mbappe, all who would play key roles in their success over the season, both domestically and on the continental front. 

 

Mbappe has a rough start to the 2016/17 season, playing just 49 minutes after the first nine games. He suffered a head injury just before half-time against Guingamp and would go on to miss the next three matches, and remaining on the bench for the following three.

 

He came off the bench against FC Metz and picked up an assist, but it would not be until the 10th league game of the season against Montpellier before he would get his first goal for the campaign. He opened his account for the season just after half-time, having won a penalty in the first half, converted by Radamel Falcao. He later set up Valère Germain in the second half to make that three goal contributions in the 6-2 win. 

 

He continued to contribute in the league, scoring three times and picking up seven assists before the turn of the year, but his most important contribution came in the Coupe De La Ligue, where he scored his first professional hattrick against Rennes in a 7-0 win in the round of 16 stage. 

 

He would up his game going into 2017, where he really started to get noticed by the elite clubs within the world. He became the youngest player to score a Ligue 1 hat-trick since Jeremy Menez at just 18 years and 2 months against Metz, becoming the second youngest player to score a hattrick in Europe’s top five leagues since 2000. 

 

Just 10 days later, Mbappe established himself in the Champions League by scoring his first goal in the competition against Manchester City in the Round of 16 first leg game. In doing so, he became the second youngest French player to score a Champions League goal behind Karim Benzema. 

 

In the second leg, the 18-year-old wonderkid lit up the scene once again, scoring the opener of the game in the 8th minute, where Monaco went on to progress with an aggregate score of 6-6 courtesy of away goals. 

 

If he hadn’t made his name by this point, he certainly did in the quarter-finals. Despite the chaos that caused the first leg to be postponed by a day, following explosions close to the Borussia Dortmund team bus, that didn’t put of Monaco and Mbappe from further announcing his name upon the world stage. 

 


 

Mbappe scored a brace in the first leg away at the Signal Iduna Park, silencing the raucous Dortmund support and becoming a headline name overnight. He scored another goal in the second leg, and Monaco progressed to the semi-finals, after being rather unfancied to progress.
By the time the Champions League semi-finals against Juventus came around, Mbappe had already racked up 22 goal contributions in Ligue 1, scoring 14 goals and setting up eight for his teammates. 

 

He was shortly becoming the most sought after youngster of the window, as were many of the Monaco players who has played their part in their impressive league form and were on top of the table and set to win their first title since the 1999-2000 season. 

 

For Monaco, the fairytale run in Europe came to an end, after Juventus swept Monaco aside in a 4-1 aggregate win over the two legs. Mbappe did, unsurprisingly, have a say in the tie, scoring Monaco’s second leg consolation with 21 minutes to play, but the game was effectively done. 

 

That being said, Monaco had arguably their most successful season in recent memory, winning Ligue 1 and reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League. They also went far in both domestic cup competitions, losing out on both occasions to PSG. 

 

Mbappe’s 26 goals in 44 appearances in all competitions at the age of just 18 years old just highlighted how he would go on to become one of the most valuable players in world football.
Unsurprisingly, Mbappe would go on to join Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2017, and has established himself as one of the best players in the world, to which he remains there to this day, despite that fact potentially being unlikelier by the passing day.


Throwback Thursday: Kylian Mbappe’s breakout season at Monaco