As the striker announces he will join Real Madrid, UEFA.com celebrates how far he has come since bursting onto the scene.

Kylian Mbappé has come an awfully long way since making his UEFA Champions League debut as a fresh-faced 17-year-old in September 2016. UEFA.com charts the France striker’s rise following his announcement that he will join Real Madrid.

Mbappé’s goals and appearances

International: 77 appearances, 46 goals

UEFA club competition: 74 appearances, 48 goals

Domestic competition: 306 appearances, 239 goals

Statistics up to 3 June 2024

Mbappé’s claims to fame

Monaco

• Mbappé was ten days shy of his 16th birthday when he played his first game in UEFA competition, coming on for the final 30 minutes of a 3-1 home loss to Zenit in the UEFA Youth League.

• A year and a day later, he made his debut in a senior UEFA club competition, being introduced for the last 34 minutes of a 4-1 UEFA Europa League group stage loss at Tottenham. His side were already 3-0 down when Mbappé came off the bench, but he did provide the assist for their goal.

• UEFA.com first wrote about him in February 2016, when he was our ‘Weekly Wonderkid’, quoting his father and manager Wilfried as saying: “He’s more than passionate [about football] – he’s crazy. I work in football and he almost puts me off it because he’s always into it 24/7. He watches everything; he can watch four or five matches in a row.”

• Did not score in his first three Champions League games (hardly surprising as he had just 25 minutes of playing time in total), making his breakthrough at the fourth time of asking 40 minutes into a 5-3 UEFA Champions League round of 16 defeat at Manchester City.

• Ended that 2016/17 Champions League campaign with six goals as Monaco reached the semi-finals, and struck 15 Ligue 1 goals in 29 appearances.

Paris

• Scored his tenth Champions League goal in a 3-1 defeat at Bayern München in December 2017, becoming the youngest player to reach that mark at the age of 18 years 350 days.

• Mbappé reached new heights in 2018/19 with a career-high 33 league goals in only 29 games as Paris stormed to the title. He was voted Ligue 1 Player of the Year after topping the goalscoring charts, ending 11 clear of the pack.

• He has scored two UEFA Champions League hat-tricks, both of them away from home; in a 5-0 win at Club Brugge in October 2019 and in a 4-1 success at Barcelona in the 2020/21 round of 16. He scored a penalty in the return leg of that tie to eclipse Lionel Messi as the youngest player to hit 25 goals in the Champions League, aged 22 years 80 days, though Erling Haaland has since broken that record.

• Signed a new contract with Paris in May 2022 having risen to second place behind Edinson Cavani in the list of the club’s record goalscorers. He became the third player to finish as Ligue 1’s leading marksman four seasons in a row but the first to finish as both top scorer and top assist provider (17) in top-flight history.

• By the end of the 2021/22 season, Mbappé had won five Ligue 1 titles (one with Monaco, four with Paris) and three French Cups (all with Paris), as well as helping the capital side reach their first UEFA Champions League final in 2020, where Paris lost 1-0 to Bayern in Lisbon.

• Eclipsed Edinson Cavani as the club’s all-time top scorer in European competition with his 31st goal in 48 Champions League games for Paris during the 1-1 draw at home to Benfica in October 2022.

• Became the first Paris player to score five goals in a match in the 7-0 success against Pays de Cassel in the Coupe de France round of 32 on 23 January 2023.

• His two strikes in the 3-0 defeat of Marseille in ‘Le Classique’ on 26 February 2023 moved him level with Cavani as the club’s all-time leading scorer on 200 goals. Six days later, he took the outright record, scoring in the 4-2 win over Nantes.

• Helped Paris set a new record of 11 Ligue 1 titles with their 2022/23 success, a campaign in which he was the league’s top scorer for the fifth year in a row and Ligue 1 Player of the Year for the fourth consecutive season.

• Reached 250 goals for Paris on 17 March 2024 thanks to a hat-trick in their 6-2 triumph at Montpellier and made it six league titles in seven seasons at the Parc des Princes the following month.

France

• Scored five goals in France’s successful 2016 UEFA European Under-19 Championship campaign in Germany. Team-mate Jean-Kévin Augustin outscored him with six, but both players were picked out as ones to watch by UEFA.com’s editorial team on site.

• Became the second youngest player ever to feature for France’s senior side when he made his debut against Luxembourg in March 2017. His maiden international goal came in a 4-0 success against the Netherlands five months later.

• Another record fell as he became the youngest French goalscorer in World Cup history at the age of 19. Joined Pelé as the only teenager to score in a World Cup final as France beat Croatia 4-2 to win the 2018 edition and was voted Best Young Player of the tournament.

• Tasted further international glory when France scooped the 2020/21 UEFA Nations League but Les Bleus were unable to retain the World Cup in 2022, losing the final to Argentina on penalties after a thrilling 3-3 draw. Mbappé was the tournament’s top scorer with eight goals and became only the second player in history to score a hat-trick in the final (after England’s Geoff Hurst in 1966). His four World Cup final goals (across two finals) is an all-time record.

• Ahead of their UEFA EURO 2024 qualifying campaign, he was named new France captain by Didier Deschamps following the international retirement of Hugo Lloris.

• In that EURO 2024 qualifying campaign, Mbappé became the youngest player to make 70 appearances for Les Bleus, then moved past Michel Platini and Antoine Griezmann to become France’s third-highest goalscorer of all-time.

What he says

Mbappé has spoken to UEFA.com on several occasions, and famously allowed us to sit in on a conversation between him and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet in the run-up to UEFA EURO 2020. Here’s what he had to say about his career when we spoke to him in spring 2021:

On his motivation: “Every time I step onto the pitch, I tell myself I’m the best, and yet I’ve played on the same pitch as [Lionel] Messi and Cristiano [Ronaldo], and they’re better players than me! They’ve done a billion more things than me, but in my head I always tell myself that I’m the best because then you’re not putting limits on yourself and you’re trying to give the best version of yourself.”

On winning the World Cup in 2018: “Normally, winning a World Cup is the pinnacle of your career. It’s something you work for at your club: you spend a few years there and you get to 27, 28, and the World Cup comes around when you’re at your peak. I was lucky enough to get stuck into it straight away and win it at 19, and that’s going to help me for when there’ll be other tests.”

On his happy place: “For me, the Champions League holds a very important place. We’ve lost at different stages, we’ve suffered. If I win it, there’ll be a lot of emotion. Even though the World Cup is the Holy Grail, for me, at club level, the Champions League is the best. The Champions League is, as the song says, for ‘les meilleures équipes’ [the best teams].”

On his ambitions: “I’ve never said I was going to be the greatest player in history, but I’ve never put limits on myself. If I get to a certain level, I’m not going to stop myself by putting a barrier up, like: ‘If I get there, then that’s it, that’s my maximum.’ No, I try to push my boundaries and see where that takes me. For the moment, it’s working well for me, and I’ll keep doing that until the end of my career.”