Ahead of the Champions League play-off second leg against Man City, Kylian Mbappe has scored 25 goals in all competitions in his first season with Real Madrid. Domestically, he also had a hat-trick against Valladolid nearly a month ago.

This is Mbappe’s first season at the Bernabeu and he has had many times of difficulty adapting. However, the French striker’s current goal tally is the dream of many other strikers. People wonder, when Mbappe gets into the swing of things in his new shirt, how will he excel and be equal to Ronaldo in the past?

To be compared to Ronaldo, Mbappe has a long way to go. Besides countless collective and individual titles with Real Madrid, CR7 has scored 422 goals and had 116 assists. If Mbappe ends this season with 50 goals, he will need to maintain this performance for 9 consecutive years to surpass Ronaldo’s scoring record. At that time, Mbappe will be 35 years old.

It’s a long story ahead, but without an impressive start, not many people would compare Mbappe to Ronaldo. Mbappe’s superb hat-trick against Man City helped him recreate many of Ronaldo’s great moves in the past.

“He has the quality to reach those numbers (Ronaldo’s achievements). However, Mbappe has to work very hard because Ronaldo’s standards are extremely high.

Mbappe always feels excited every time he plays for Real Madrid because he believes he can reach Ronaldo’s level” – Carlo Ancelotti shared after the victory over Man City.

At Real Madrid, Ronaldo played nearly 38,000 minutes, scoring continuously for 9 seasons in 6 arenas. Notably, CR7 rarely suffered injuries, as evidenced by the fact that he only sat out 50 matches during those 9 years. This is one of the key factors to maintain and improve his scoring record.

Mbappe is currently one of the players with the most impressive goal-scoring ratio in Europe. Since playing for AS Monaco, PSG and now Real Madrid, the French international has a performance of 0.91 goals per game.

When he played for AS Monaco from the age of 17, Mbappe had 24 goals and 7 assists after about 26 matches. Each season playing for the Louis II team, Mbappe had at least 20 goals. As for Ronaldo, it was not until the 2008 and 2009 seasons that he made a breakthrough in scoring. After that, CR7 reached unimaginable milestones in terms of numbers while playing for Real Madrid.

Mbappe has had a better start and has just become the youngest player to reach 500 goals. At 26 years and 61 days, Mbappe has 359 goals and 142 assists. In the last 7 domestic seasons, Mbappe has scored very regularly and efficiently. He has 192 goals with only an expected goals ratio (xG) of 166.5.

At Real Madrid, as soon as he arrived, Mbappe had many excellent teammates by his side like Ronaldo before. Together with Vinicius, Bellingham and Rodrygo, Mbappe created the most superb attacking quartet in Europe at the moment. Adapting to the new position and being fully supported by his teammates are very important factors for Mbappe to increase his scoring record.

However, Ronaldo’s position at Real is considered higher than Mbappe’s, at least in the French striker’s first season. There was a period when, despite being surrounded by excellent strikers, Ronaldo alone still accounted for 40% of Los Blancos’ goals in 2 seasons. Although Mbappe was still very good, he could not “steal” the opportunities of the others.

“I don’t care about being a top scorer. I’ve scored a lot of goals in my career. If scoring a lot of goals can be exchanged for titles, I will do it at all costs. If I score 50 goals this season, that’s great, but above all it’s about titles,” Mbappe shared.