Kylian Mbappe set to follow in Cristiano Ronaldo’s footsteps at Real Madrid with big change in his second season | OneFootball

As Kylian Mbappe enters his second full season with Real Madrid, it is clear that the youngster has adapted much better than initially anticipated to the team.

The initial days were rough for the Frenchman and he struggled to find his niche on the field. Once he did, however, there was simply no stopping the goalscoring machine who went on to win the Pichichi award.

Mbappe is now set to begin only his second season at the club and will do so with a brand new look as he appears set to change his jersey number. The events, however, force one to draw parallels with Cristiano Ronaldo who underwent a similar situation during his time at the club.

A historic second season

As relayed by MARCA in a recent update, Ronaldo arrived in Madrid in 2009 but found his usual number 7 jersey occupied at the club.

With Raul Gonzalez still donning that number, the Portuguese star took the number 9 shirt and played out a good first season with the ‘CR9’ tag.

Real Madrid’s new No. 10 (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

Everything changed, however, when Raul left Real Madrid a year later and the number 7 shirt was vacant. Ronaldo pounced on it and the rest is history.

Now, Mbappe faces a queerly similar situation and will sincerely hope his trajectory follows a similar curve to Ronaldo’s.

After arriving at Real Madrid last season, Mbappe found the number 10 shirt associated with Luka Modric and simply unavailable. He thus went on and donned the number 9 shirt for Los Blancos and produced a special debut season.

A year down the line, Modric is no longer at the club and the number 10 shirt will be Mbappe’s to take.

Following the footsteps of his idol, he will thus change his jersey number in his second season at the club and the Real Madrid fans will hope for him to hit the same highs the Portuguese legend did.