When they caught Kylian Mbappé getting off his private plane at Barajas Airport, the phones of the Real Madrid officials started buzzing, and the video was forwarded from one terminal to another. Some were in the corridors of the RCDE Stadium waiting to access the VIP box, from where they watched the match against Espanyol in which the Whites could say goodbye to the League for good, and others were already sitting on their couch at home to watch the game on TV. None of them liked seeing the team's star, the most desired footballer of the last decade, the one who took six years to arrive at the Bernabéu and with whom they have been unable to win a title this season, leaving an image so far from the team's sporting reality. Therefore, despite the victory in Barcelona, Monday dawned with more buzz around the forward, who will undergo new tests on Wednesday to decide whether he will make it to the classic match or not.
"It's unnecessary," they comment to EL MUNDO from the dressing room, where they do not understand Mbappé's way of acting. As reported by this newspaper in its Sunday edition, before the match against Espanyol, there was already some discomfort in the Madrid dressing room about the French player's trip to Italy with his partner, Spanish actress Ester Expósito. His teammates understood and supported his last flight to Paris in March to seek a second medical opinion on his knee injury, something that, with the club's permission, most footballers usually do.
But in this case, the minor severity of his injury (some discomfort in the left hamstring) and the club's insistence that he was doing "everything possible" to play in the classic did not fit in with the dressing room's reflection, which saw the trip as "unnecessary."
Mbappé was in Valdebebas at the beginning of last week and returned again yesterday, Monday, after several days on the Italian coast, where the paparazzi found him in various locations in Cagliari and on a yacht in the middle of the sea. Images that quickly reached the mobile phones of a dressing room preparing for the match against Espanyol. Nobody understood or supported it. In the offices, his vacation was overlooked, but it was acknowledged that so many images and videos were not the most appropriate at that time.
"Together with everything we have until the last whistle," wrote Jude Bellingham in his Instagram post, where he also posted a picture of the whole team and another with Vinicius, accompanied by a winking emoji. The Brazilian, for his part, wrote "to death with this club" and received, among others, comments from Lucas Vázquez and Benzema: "Number one," replied the former Real Madrid striker. Bellingham responded "brother" to one of his images.
Mbappé, who did congratulate his compatriot Marcus Thuram for Inter's Scudetto, did not appear on social media to congratulate his teammates, something that is customary after each victory.
Arbeloa also did not seem very pleased with the situation, who after winning in Cornellà gave some interesting responses about Mbappé's trip to Italy. "The doctors coordinate when the players should go to Valdebebas and when not. From there, each player in their free time does what they consider appropriate, and I don't get involved in that," he said, before being asked again about the comparison between Mbappé's commitment and that of Vinicius, who scored two goals.
"I do not doubt the commitment of any of my players; they know how important these matches are. I like it when they understand what this shirt represents, that there is no player bigger than Real Madrid," he declared, adding that "we have not built what Real Madrid is with players who go out in tuxedos to play, but with players who end up covered in mud."
He then changed his tone to talk about Vinicius: "He is a natural leader, everyone loves him, and he is a great person." The relationship between the Brazilian and the Frenchman is good, but the dressing room, which adores Vinicius, is now focusing on Mbappé. The fans are also doing the same, unhappy with the results and the image.