French forward Kylian Mbappe has struggled to live up to expectations since his highly publicised transfer from Ligue 1 Club Paris St. Germain to LaLiga giants Real Madrid in July 2024.
Mbappe’s performance in big games has left a lot to be desired.
His horror show during a 4-0 loss to Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabeu in October was soon followed by an underwhelming performance in the UEFA Champions League in a 3-1 home loss to AC Milan.
While Real Madrid picked up to defeat Osasuna and Leganes convincingly in the two LaLiga matches that followed, Mbappe’s ability to influence matches was still not felt.
Play here and stand a chance of winning the over 392 Million SportPesa Mega Jackpot
With Rodrygo and Vinicius Jr out injured for the UEFA Champions League trip to Anfield to play a high-flying Liverpool, an opportunity had presented itself for Mbappe to prove his worth but, after missing a penalty in a 2-0 loss to the English club on Wednesday night, doubts continue to linger on whether Mbappe’s move to Real Madrid was the right one.
The penalty miss was sandwiched between Liverpool two goals, meaning that the Frenchman had thrown away an opportunity to pull his team back into the game.
Mbappe’s penalty, which was easily saved by Caoimhin Kelleher, was poor for a player of his quality. His attempt to place the ball into the right corner was predictable and with the ball lacking pace, Liverpool’s Irish goalkeeper easily dived to his left to prevent a goal.
It was not the first time Mbappe was missing a penalty, and horrifyingly at that. Excluding penalty shootouts, that was the 11th penalty miss of Mbappe’s career.
ALSO READ: How Pep Guardiola can be saved from further self-harm
With him having scored 45 penalties already, his success rate in converting penalties now stands at 80.36%, which, fortunately for Mbappe, is within industry standards.
Cristiano Ronaldo (168/199; 84.42%), Lionel Messi (111/142; 78.16%), Mo Salah (44/55; 80.00%), Robert Lewandowski (84/94; 89.36%), and Vinicius Jr (7/9; 77.78%) have also had their fair share of penalty misses but Mbappe’s ability to handle pressure should be a concern for Real Madrid.
A deeper look into Mbappe’s 11 penalty misses, reveal that six of them (over 50%) came at time when the score was 0-0 (five times) or when his team was trailing 1-0 (yesterday’s match against Liverpool).
As a percentage of his penalty misses, that is a worrying statistic for a player of Mbappe’s calibre as it means that the chances of him missing a penalty when his team needs him to score an equalising goal or give them lead, is very high.
Kylian Mbappe
For context, only three of Mo Salah’s 10 penalty misses came at a point in the game when his team need him to give them the lead (once) or level the score (twice).
The comparison with Mo Salah makes sense because the two players have taken almost the same amount of penalties in their career and their conversion rate is at par.
Overall, Mbappe has taken 30 penalties at key moments in the game – that is when his team needs a goal to go ahead, go level, or reduce the deficit. In that regard, Mbappe has converted 24 out of 30 penalties, translating to a conversion success rate of 80%.
On the other hand, Mo Salah has taken 31 penalties at key moments in a game and he missed only three of those, translating to a conversion rate of 90.32%.
Therefore, as a penalty taker, despite them having the same conversion rates overall, Mo Salah is more reliable than Mbappe as he has proven he can handle pressure better.
The miss against Liverpool should be a wake-up call for Kylian Mbappe is as far as taking penalties is concerned. He should either improve on his technique and ability to handle pressure or avoid taking penalty at crucial moments in the game.