Kylian Mbappé

Mbappe joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 after seven prolific years at Paris Saint-Germain, and by the 2025-26 season had made the transition look seamless: 29 goals and 11 assists in 40 appearances across all competitions, 24 of the goals in La Liga alone.

For France, he overtook Olivier Giroud as the national team's all-time top scorer during the 2026 World Cup and reached his 100th cap in the same tournament, cementing a captaincy he inherited after the 2022 World Cup final.

A forward built around explosive straight-line pace and a ruthless first touch in behind a defensive line, Mbappe operates as much off the last defender's shoulder as in central areas — the run itself is often the decisive action, before the ball even arrives.

He finishes comfortably off either foot, which is part of why defenses cannot simply show him onto one side, and he has increasingly taken on a captain's creative responsibility for France, dropping to link play rather than staying purely on the shoulder of the last defender.

Mbappe won the 2026 World Cup Golden Boot with 10 goals, matching Gerd Muller's 1970 record tally and becoming the first player in tournament history to win the award twice, having also topped the scoring charts in Qatar in 2022.

France's own tournament ended in third place rather than the final, a result Mbappe addressed directly in an open letter to French fans afterward, acknowledging the team owed them a better ending despite his own record-breaking individual campaign.