Real Madrid approaches the last match of 2025 with two borderline races that maintain a very close bond. Xabi Alonso clings to the bench under the suspicious observation of the club management, still one step away from being fired, while Kylian Mbappé continues the historic mark of goals in a calendar year at the club, Cristiano Ronaldo’s 59 in 50 games in 2013. The Frenchman, who has 58 in 58 games in 2025, has this Saturday against Sevilla his last opportunity to add two goals and make it surpass. (9:00 p.m., Movistar). Two goals would give him the record and surely also more time for his coach. “We want to finish well, get the third victory and leave with a good feeling to start 2026 with energy and optimism,” said the coach this Friday.
Their destinies are more and more linked. If we take the whole of 2025, Mbappé’s 58 goals represent 42% of the 138 scored by the team (excluding the rivals’ two own goals), according to Opta records.
However, Madrid’s reliance on goals has become extreme this season, in Xabi’s part of the year: he has scored 28 of the team’s 49 goals, or 57.1% of the total.
This pronounced tendency explains the coach’s comments when asked on Wednesday why the Frenchman played the full 90 minutes against Talavera, a team that is at the bottom of the Primera RFEF standings, just a week after not being able to participate against Manchester City: “Well, he was decisive with both goals, because Kylian still has the ability to score goals. The third goal was key (the match ended 2-3), and that’s why we We kept him on the field and that’s why he started.”
The 10th extends Xabi’s stay at the Bernabéu as he moves closer to Cristiano’s record. And at the same time, it is moving further and further away from the Portuguese weight: in 2013, CR’s goals, the team’s benchmark, represented 38.3% of the total. Mbappé is more and more alone. Rodrygo went 32 games without winning an award and the last time Vinicius scored was on October 10, against Villarreal. “I think it’s a question of matches and moments. He was very close to scoring and I have no doubt that the goal will come,” Xabi said this Friday.
Mbappé’s goals are also more important. He scored almost twice as often when Madrid were losing: he scored 11 goals while at a disadvantage, compared to six for the Portuguese in these circumstances in 2013. In his record year, Cristiano scored just over half when they were winning, while the Frenchman scored 40%.
Two months ago, Iván Zamorano, another great Madrid finisher, established the connection between the two footballers, which for him goes beyond the game: “They are totally different, but there is something that brings them together. First, the goals, the statistics, and then the hunger of each of them. In Mbappé, I see Cristiano at 25 or 26 years old.”
There are notable differences in the way they interpret the position, for example in the way they attack the zone, but especially in the decisive moment of the shot. Mbappé almost always scores with his right foot (50.86%), very rarely with his left foot (7) and almost never with his head (1). In 2013, Cristiano scored as many as 11 goals with his head and twice as many with his left foot (14).
A few months ago, when 2025 was still beginning, which could end with his record, Cristiano himself saw the Frenchman’s potential for more: “He doesn’t know how to play as a striker, in my opinion,” he said in an interview with Chiringuito. “It’s not that he doesn’t know it, it’s just that it’s not his position. If I was in Madrid, I would teach him to play like a nine. Because I wasn’t a striker, but I got used to playing like a striker. I was a winger. I’m not a typical striker. I think he shouldn’t be a typical striker. If I was him, I played more or less like Cristiano plays like a striker.”
Without playing like him, he is two goals away from beating the record of the footballer whose posters he had wallpapered in his room as a child. “Cristiano has always been an example. I have the chance to speak with him, he gave me advice, he helped me. In Madrid, Cristiano is number one,” Mbappé said in October. “But I want to make my way.”
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