Mbappé, the fifth Golden Boot in Madrid's history

The season is coming to an end, with the Club World Cup permitting, which for many teams will mark the start of the next campaign rather than the end of the current one. Real Madrid is devoid of major titles, but has been consoled by individual trophies. No Champions League, no La Liga, no Copa del Rey, but a Pichichi and Golden Boot are in Kylian Mbappé's bag.

No one would consider the Frenchman's first year in the Spanish capital to be exceptional, but the reality is that the numbers have certainly been on his side. He arrived timidly, receiving criticism for his lack of leadership and his incomprehensible missed opportunities, a situation that hit rock bottom in the match at San Mamés in mid-November, where he missed his second consecutive penalty after the one at Anfield three days earlier. Since then, he's changed his tune and at times resembled the Mbappé that Florentino Perez had been chasing for seven years.

Kylian Mbappe has won the Pichichi and Golden Boot awards in his first season at Real Madrid. He takes home the domestic award thanks to his 31 goals, four more than Lewandowski's 27 (at press time), and the European award thanks to his 62 points, three and a half more than Viktor Gyokeres ' 58.5 and four more than Mo Salah, who closes the season with 58. The Swedish striker for Sporting Clube de Portugal scored 39 goals in La Liga, but as it's not one of the big five European championships, each goal only counts for one and a half points. In the Egyptian's case, he closed out the season yesterday with a goal against Crystal Palace, but he needed two more to equal Mbappé and three to surpass him, a difficult task in a game with nothing at stake and with both teams thinking more about their holidays than individual objectives.

Mbappé wins the first Golden Boot of his career and, logically, his first Pichichi trophy, but it is not the first European award for a Real Madrid striker. Before Kylian , Cristiano Ronaldo won three Golden Boots. In 2011 (40 goals), in 2014 (41) and in 2015 (48). Before the Portuguese, the first Real Madrid player to win the Golden Boot was Hugo Sánchez, thanks to his 38 goals, all of them scored with his first touch.

Mbappé 's Pichichi award is Real Madrid's 29th. Benzema won the last one in the 2021-2022 season, the year in which Karim also won the Ballon d'Or and his fifth Champions League title as a Real Madrid player. Di Stéfano, with five top scorer trophies, is the Real Madrid player with the most Pichichi trophies. Puskas and Hugo Sánchez, with four, complete the podium.

Mbappé 's numbers, pending the outcome of the Club World Cup, a tournament in which Madrid will play at least three matches and, if they reach the final, up to seven, are close to the best of his career. The Frenchman has scored a total of 43 goals (31 in La Liga, 7 in the Champions League, 2 in the Copa del Rey, 1 in the Spanish Super Cup, 1 in the European Super Cup, and 1 in the Intercontinental Cup) and is just one goal shy of the 44 he scored with PSG last season, his last with the Parisian club. Unless something unusual happens in the United States, he'll likely surpass that mark and set a higher bar.

For now, Mbappé is relaxing during this week's vacation before playing in the Nations League Final Four with France, who will face Spain in the semifinals. The French star was in Monaco yesterday, Sunday, experiencing the Formula 1 Grand Prix firsthand. There, he met up with one of his teammates, Thibaut Courtois, who came with his celebrity partner, and with Zidane and Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.