The Changing of the Old Guard
Written by Rabbil (Twitter @RA_Sikdar)
Kyilian Mbappe picked up the ball and began running away from Lionel Messi and his teammates. It was a surge of speed that devastated the Argentine’s team time and time again. They could not live with him and they certainly could not keep up with him. It was like chasing a lightning bolt, several of them striking Messi and co to shreds. By the end, Mbappe stood tall over a deposed Messi.
This was not Barcelona versus PSG, not yet. This was France versus Argentina in a sun-soaked Russia where there was an audience to witness Mbappe’s heralding as the new superstar in world football with a definitive blow against Messi. It would not end there. Mbappe would go on to win the World Cup in a tournament that felt like his announcement to the world.
There was no-one there to watch in the Camp Nou when Mbappe returned two and a half years later to finish the job against Messi, yet the entire world was watching. As PSG ran Barcelona ragged, as Mbappe ran them ragged, this was the night when there could be certainty in the assertion that neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo were the best players in the world anymore. That now arguably belongs to Mbappe, the kid who has finally come good.
PSG’s 4–1 triumph at Barcelona was symbolic for many reasons. Europe’s greatest pretender, bankrolled by morally dubious cash, finally produced a noteworthy performance at the ground where they suffered their greatest humiliation. This was also arguably Mbappe’s greatest performance, certainly in his club career. He ran Barcelona into the ground. Every finish was defined by authority and self-belief. The pace was stunning and terrifying. The snapshot of Gerard Pique desperately hanging onto him as he became a blur of white was strikingly symbolic of where the match was tilting. Mbappe was Barcelona’s kryptonite. A team so remarkably vulnerable to intensity and dynamism met a player who embodies it in spades. Every time he collected the ball, Barcelona were panicking. Every time he ran with it, it was as though the Barcelona players around him were frozen in time. There is speed and then there is Mbappe. His concluding goal, the one that surely takes PSG into the quarter-final, was a breathtaking counterattack capped with a devastating finish.
Incredibly, he isn’t the only young player now taking the spotlight. Twenty-four hours after he devastated one Spanish team, another fell victim to Borussia Dortmund and Erling Haaland. Sevilla took the lead but that only ignited an unstoppable display. If Mbappe is a lightning bolt, Haaland’s left foot can create sounds of thunder when the ball crashes into the net. There is an incredible brutality to his game. When he starts running, he is unstoppable, and so often finishes with the ball in the back of the net.
His record in the Champions League is astonishing: 18 goals in 13 games. The goals are a variety of beauty. He is someone who cannot stop scoring, with 41 goals in 42 games for Dortmund. Haaland’s signing for Dortmund was the perfect decision for both parties. The club received a player with dazzling talents who could help them stay in sight of Bayern Munich, while Haaland was taking his development as a footballer at a club where they really know how to turn good players into great ones. Right now, Haaland is staking his claim as the best striker in the world. He’s tall, yet explosively fast. He can score with both feet and his head, as his opponents have discovered. He also has a big heart, refusing to dissolve in big games, reflected in his habit for scoring when Borussia desperately need him, and being a constant source of goals in the Champions League. An away fixture at Sevilla is tricky for anyone, but Haaland dominated them as if the ball and pitch belonged to him and no-one else.
After the Spanish side took the lead, Haaland wrestled Dortmund back into the game. First he provided the assist for the equaliser from deep. Then, collecting the ball, he surged towards Sevilla’s trembling defence, sucking in players. Perhaps they anticipated a shot, but the defenders weren’t ready for what he did. It was the simplest of passing exchanges, but done in a blink, and Dortmund were ahead. He was there to finish their third goal. Dortmund are a good side but when Haaland is great, they can beat anyone. He is their weapon, an instrument capable of bludgeoning any defence in the world.
The world has wondered what would follow Messi and Ronaldo. Would we get anyone or anything like them? They created a rivalry and set standards that defied belief. Between 2008 to 2018, they ran the world. And taking up opposite sides in the biggest club rivalry in the world, their on-pitch feud excited everyone, created a fandom like nothing seen before. Their numbers are mind-boggling and we may never see anyone like them. What they have done is unthinkable and when they retire, they do so as the greatest players of their generation and perhaps of all time.
But football abhors a vacuum. Someone must eventually come to occupy the spaces they leave behind and the evidence is that it is Mbappe and Haaland. They are both young and supremely talented, with statistics that defy belief. What they don’t have, to compare to Messi and Ronaldo, is a rivalry born in countless conflicts on the pitch. When you think of Messi and Ronaldo, you think of the 2011 clashes when Messi ran through Madrid in the European Cup at the Santiago Bernabeu, you think of Ronaldo sealing Madrid’s league in 2012 with a winner at Barcelona. These are moments served up amongst a myriad of others at the highest level.
Mbappe is at PSG and Haaland is at Dortmund. Not only are their meetings likely to be few, they are playing at clubs who do not grab the attention the way certain clubs do. It is inevitable that one of the big Spanish duo will come in for one of them. England is also a possibility. Liverpool and Manchester City are developing an intriguing rivalry, and it would be football’s new epoch following Messi-Ronaldo if these two were to head there.
What is clear, is that as Messi and Ronaldo make their way, these are the two now staking their claims to being the best in the world.
