Kylian Mbappé surpasses Lionel Messi with historic Champions League landmark

It took one touch from a Brahim Díaz pass, and Kylian Mbappé had Real Madrid in front on another Champions League night. This time, the opponent was Inter Milan. The Frenchman, last season’s top scorer in Europe’s premier club competition, opened his latest campaign doing what he does best: scoring goals.

Mbappé now has 71 Champions League goals, spread across the three clubs he has represented in the competition, one of the few major prizes that still eludes him. It’s a tally he now takes to Rome eager to end a two-game scoreless sequence in LaLiga, in what will be his 100th appearance in Europe’s elite club tournament. At 27 years and 298 days old, Mbappé is set to become the youngest player to bring up a century of Champions League games, overtaking Lionel Messi’s record of 28 years and 84 days.

It is a story that began with Monaco during the 2016-17 season, when Mbappé first started making his mark. After debuting against Bayer Leverkusen with just 13 minutes on the field, replacing Tiemoué Bakayoko and briefly sharing the pitch with current teammate Bernardo Silva, he had to wait two more matches for his first Champions League goal.

That breakthrough came against Manchester City in a wild 5-3 defeat. Coincidentally, it was also his first start in the competition. His strike, Monaco’s second of the night, briefly put the Principality club ahead at 2-1. Latching onto a through ball, he fired an unstoppable first-time finish past Willy Caballero without taking a touch.

From that night to the present, Mbappé has featured in 99 Champions League matches, scoring at a rate of 0.71 per game. The numbers reveal another remarkable detail: he has found the net in 49 of those 99 appearances. In other words, he has scored in almost half the Champions League matches he has played.

And he has done it in virtually every way imaginable. Those 71 goals place him joint fifth on the competition’s all-time scoring list alongside Raúl González. Ahead of him remain the towering figures of Cristiano Ronaldo (140 goals), Messi (129), Robert Lewandowski (109) and Karim Benzema (90). The pursuit continues.

His Champions League résumé includes one four-goal haul, against Olympiacos in a 4-3 victory last November, with three of those finishes coming from first-time strikes inside the box. He has also recorded four hat tricks, two of them in a Real Madrid shirt against Manchester City and Almaty, along with 11 braces. In addition, he has scored a single goal in 33 separate matches.

Last season, Mbappé finished as the competition’s leading scorer with 15 goals. He attempted 56 shots, of which 30 were on target. Half of those efforts on frame ended up in the net, while 13 missed the target and another 13 were blocked.

Mbappé remains one of the quickest gunslingers in European soccer when it comes to pulling the trigger. Yet for all his prolific output, the efficiency of that trigger finger still leaves room for improvement.

Now he needs to turn what has always been his greatest strength into an absolute necessity. The Frenchman finds himself in unfamiliar territory, stuck in a strange limbo where Real Madrid supporters seem unwilling to forgive even the slightest mistake, despite the public backing his head coach, José Mourinho, continues to offer at every press conference.

After a disappointing start to the season for Los Blancos, and despite scoring eight goals across LaLiga and the Champions League, Mbappé is attracting more attention for his life away from the field than for his performances on it. Recently, after leaving the French national team’s camp because of a potential injury, he was spotted in Paris and Switzerland, far from his teammates as they carried out their recovery work. Meanwhile, reports in France have fueled speculation about a possible departure in the summer of 2027.

Against Roma on matchday two of the Champions League, he desperately needs to find the back of the net again. He is fully fit, operating at 100%, and in need of a gift he can only give himself.

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