At the risk of antagonising Jude Bellingham into another mock crotch-grabbing gesture, it’s safe to say that the two biggest names remaining at Euro 2024 face one another on Friday.
Kylian Mbappe and France take on Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal in a heavyweight quarterfinal in Hamburg. The tournament hasn’t been kind to either superstar forward so far.
Ronaldo’s tear-stained anguish was the defining feature of Portugal’s Round of 16 slog against Slovenia after his failure to convert an extra-time penalty left the game goalless and led to a shootout. The five-time Ballon d’Or winner converted the Selecao’s first spot-kick, more than Slovenia managed collectively as Diogo Costa saved three from three and Portugal won 3-0.
Mbappe’s penalty in France’s 1-1 draw against Poland is the only goal any player in Didier Deschamps’ squad has scored in the tournament. Their 1-0 victories over Austria and Belgium came courtesy of own goals from Max Wober and Jan Vertonghen.
Ronaldo is goalless in four games himself and the form of both teams neither promises a classic nor suggests they will provide a platform that allows their talismanic frontmen to duke it out as Ronaldo and Lionel Messi used to in their Real Madrid and Barcelona days.
The spectre of Madrid looms over this game, given Mbappe is now officially employed by the 15-time European champions. In many respects — and this in no way besmirches the exceptional deeds of Karim Benzema, Vinicius Junior and Bellingham — Mbappe is the galactico Ronaldo replacement Madrid and their president Florentino Perez have wanted since Cristiano left to join Juventus in 2018.
So instead of comparing them right now, as we ultimately will when they walk out at Vollksparkstadion on Friday, how does Mbappe rank alongside Ronaldo at the same stage of his international career? And who had the most impressive body of work prior to securing their switch to the Santiago Bernabeu?
Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Kylian Mbappe: Does France star have a better record than Portugal’s greatest goal scorer?
Ronaldo’s histrionics against Slovenia were really quite something when you consider his international goal scoring record.
No man in history has scored more international goals than Ronaldo and the chances of anyone surpassing his gargantuan tally of 130 feel slim to none. Perhaps his commitment to the Portuguese cause could be expressed via an alternative means to blasting the ball towards the goal from all over the place.
However, if we compare their international careers cap-by-cap, Mbappe is far ahead of where Ronaldo was at the same point.
The France star has 82 caps and has plundered 48 goals. On his 82nd cap, a friendly against Luxembourg in August 2011, Ronaldo scored for Portugal for the 27th time.
There is wider context to this. At the start of the previous decade, Ronaldo had not long transitioned into being the otherworldly goal-getting machine now famous around the world.
He began his career with Sporting CP, Manchester United and Portugal as a box-of-tricks winger. It took him 30 caps to reach 10 goals and 51 to bring up 20, landmarks that no one complained he’d reached in sluggish fashion.
Only when he established himself as unquestionably one of the two best players in the world during his time in La Liga did Ronaldo go into overdrive for club and country as he transitioned into more of a penalty-box predator.
So, Mbappe has a head start in this respect after arriving in the France team as a fully formed world-class forward. But reaching Ronaldo’s prolific level is a challenge only topped by trying to match his longevity.
Is Mbappe better than Ronaldo was when he signed for Real Madrid?
Madrid signed Ronaldo for a then-world-record €94 million in 2009 after he’d taken his game to the next level at Manchester United, lifting both the Champions League and Ballon d’Or on account of his efforts in the 2007/08 season. Both prizes have remained beyond Mbappe up until this point.
At that time, Ronaldo had 123 career club goals in 323 appearances, the bulk of which came under Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford.
Again, these should not be disparaged in any way. These achievements were literally enough to make Ronaldo the most expensive player of all time. But even allowing for the fact that Mbappe is 25 (Cristiano was 24 when he moved to the Spanish capital), he is ahead of him at this point.
He left Paris Saint-Germain as their all-time record goal scorer with a phenomenal 256 in 308 games. Throw in his Monaco tally of 27 goals in 60 appearances and the gulf gets bigger.
Once more, the disclaimers around development and position, noted with regard to their international careers, are worth remembering. Being ahead of Ronaldo in relative terms at this stage is one thing, but will Mbappe still be doing all this when he’s 39? It feels somewhere close to impossible.
If anything, Mbappe winning these bespoke statistical battles shows how great Ronaldo has been. It underlines how much the Frenchman must do to sit alongside him in the pantheon. He can at least try to make another small dent in Hamburg on Friday.