Before Real Madrid – PSG – Is Kylian Mbappé already the best player in the history of PSG?

History is still being written for a few months. Arrived in the summer of 2017 after only half a season at a very high level, Kylian Mbappé sees his contract come to an end at PSG in June and the hope of keeping him for another year or two is dwindling as the deadline approaches. . His experience is not yet over and he remains, perhaps, the best to write as long as the Champions League adventure continues. But when he is in the middle of his best season, he has never seemed so strong and he joined Zlatan Ibrahimovic last week in the second rank of PSG’s top scorers, it is legitimate to wonder if Kylian Mbappé, at only 23, is already the best player in the history of the Parisian club.

How to determine its place in this ranking? By objective factors first and, in the first place, the number of trophies amassed since his arrival. With nine trophies, and even if the title of champion of France reaches out to him next May, he is very far from the record held by Marco Verratti (27). It suffers from the disappearance of the Coupe de la Ligue of course but above all from the air pockets in the league last year and in the Coupe de France in 2019 and 2020. For comparison, in four seasons, one less than the world champion, Zlatan Ibrahimovic had accumulated 12 titles including a clear round in L1 (four championship titles) and Edinson Cavani, 19 in 7 seasons.

Unique stats in the history of PSG

Despite everything, has the status of PSG fundamentally changed in France? Is Paris less strong with him? It is very far from certain. Another measurement scale: individual statistics. KMB has already joined the top 5 of PSG’s best scorers and passers, he is the only one in this case.

• Top scorers in the history of PSG:

1. Edinson Cavani: 200

2. Kylian Mbappé and Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 156

4. Pauleta : 109

5. Dominique Rocheteau: 100

• Best passers in the history of PSG:

1. Angel Di Maria: 108

2. Safet Susic: 103

3. Mustafa Dahleb: 80

4. Kylian Mbappé : 66

5. Javier Pastore : 57

Best player of the best period of PSG

Purely objective criteria make Mbappé one of the most influential players in the history of PSG. But it is impossible not to take into account the context and the gigantic gap created on the competition. Winning titles in the PSG of the 1980s or 1990s had a different value than today where Ligue 1 can no longer bear comparison. It is therefore difficult to compare periods. Raï, for example, does not have the same statistics or the same track record as Mbappé, yet is he less important in the history of the Parisian club?

What is indisputable today is that Mbappé is the best player of the best period of PSG. Since he signed, Paris has established itself as a benchmark in Europe. What Zlatan Ibrahimovic never managed to do (grow the club in the Champions League), the boy from Bondy succeeded even if Neymar remains the great man of the campaign which led Paris to the final for the only time in its history in C1 (2020). If Paris had installed a throne at Ibra and built a tailor-made team, Mbappé had to take power in a club whose project, in 2017, was called Neymar. The Swede has taken the club to a new dimension and Bondy’s bombshell is much better surrounded today. However, this season, we only see him. The feat is all the more resounding.

The most efficient, the most reliable: the best player in the world

Mbappé has been the most efficient, consistent and reliable player since 2017 in France and Europe (three times top scorer in L1, twice best player). We will remember in France his quadruple in 13 minutes or his hat-trick in the semi-final of the Coupe de France in 2020 against OL and, above all, in Europe his hat-trick at Camp Nou in the round of 16 in 2021, his double in Munich a few weeks later and his goal, perhaps his most striking in club, in stoppage time against Real in the first leg in February. Finally, he embodies better than other great PSG players (Cavani, Marquinhos, Verratti, Thiago Silva) and even than Neymar or Messi the project and the ambitions of the Parisian club that he carries on his shoulders.

Never, even in the era of Ibrahimovic, has QSI’s PSG seemed so dependent on an individuality – you only have to see the poverty of the content of a Paris deprived of Mbappé against Nice to measure it – even then that its workforce has never been so well equipped to achieve its absolute dream in C1. For the first time in history, Paris has the best player in the world in its team since no one else supports the comparison with Mbappé in the middle of the season. It’s hard not to make him the best player in the history of PSG, at least during the QSI era…