Kylian Mbappe did not join Real Madrid to play it safe. The French superstar arrived at the Bernabeu amid much fanfare last summer to chase the Uefa Champions League dream that so cruelly eluded him at Paris Saint-Germain – and perhaps more than anything, to script nights like the one Madrid must now conjure against Arsenal on Wednesday.
The task is not for the faint hearted: Madrid are staring into the abyss. A 3-0 first-leg dismantling at the Emirates Stadium last week leaves the 15-time champions with a mountain even they have never climbed. But this is Real Madrid, and this is the Bernabeu – and if any team is capable of overcoming insurmountable odds, it's the men in white.
It is for precisely this sort of improbable mission that Madrid president Florentino Perez moved heaven and earth to bring Mbappe to Madrid. After years of courtship, Los Blancos finally got their man – and now they need him more than ever.
“Of course we can,” Mbappe declared defiantly when asked last Tuesday if Madrid could turn the tie around in Spain.
The task is enormous. Arsenal, buoyant and brutal, put one foot in the final four courtesy of Declan Rice’s brace of free kicks – the first of his career – and Mikel Merino’s tidy finish. Yet Mikel Arteta’s side would do well to remember what lurks in the shadows of the Bernabeu – ghosts of comebacks past, and the spectre of Mbappe in full flight.
After all, it was only two months ago that the Frenchman single-handedly tore Manchester City to shreds in the play-off round, netting a hat-trick in Madrid’s 6-3 aggregate triumph over the Premier League champions. If there is a player capable of pulling Real from the jaws of elimination, it's Mbappe.
He owes his teammates one, too. Mbappe was sent off for an uncharacteristic show of petulance against Alaves on Sunday. He was forced to watch from the sidelines as his side eked out a 1-0 win to keep them in the title hunt in La Liga, albeit four points off leaders Barcelona.
Mbappe has already racked up 33 goals in 49 appearances this season, matching Cristiano Ronaldo’s debut-season tally – and it is Ronaldo's footsteps he now seeks to follow. The Portuguese famously overturned a 2-0 deficit against Wolfsburg in 2016 with a Bernabeu hat-trick that sent Madrid on their way to another European crown.
"At the Santiago Bernabeu, comebacks are always on everyone's lips," Ronaldo once said. "90 minutes here is a long time."
No one knows that better than Mbappe. He was on the receiving end in 2022 when, despite scoring in both legs for PSG, he watched Karim Benzema pull Madrid from the brink with a 17-minute hat-trick. The striker was left shell-shocked. That experience, it seems, only sharpened his resolve to someday stand on the winning side of a miracle.
“I've been dreaming of moments like this since I was a kid, to play for this club and to feel what it's like on a big night at the Bernabeu,” Mbappe said after his City heroics. “A lot of people have told me about it, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I hope we’ll have many more.”
Madrid fans will be hoping so, too. Wednesday offers the latest chance to add another chapter to the club’s anthology of comebacks – from Sergio Ramos’ 93rd-minute lifeline in Lisbon in 2014 to the Juanito-led epics of the 1980s.
Coach Carlo Ancelotti has seen enough of this club to believe in the impossible. “We have to believe, we have to have confidence,” he said last week. “Because sometimes, quite often at the Bernabeu, it happens.”
Now it’s Mbappe’s turn. Arsenal may have dominated in London, but the script is far from finished. And if Madrid are to flip the narrative, it will likely begin with the player who arrived last summer to carve his name into the club’s hallowed history.
