MADRID (AP) — Kylian Mbappé credits a change in mentality for starting to play better for Real Madrid.
Mbappé has struggled in his first season with Madrid but has been gradually meeting the expectations that came with his high profile.
He extended a scoring streak with a brace as Madrid routed 10-man Las Palmas 4-1 in La Liga Sunday, reaching four goals in his last four matches. He said last year after a loss to Athletic Bilbao that he hit bottom with Madrid and it was time to change.
“After the game in Bilbao I changed my mentality,” Mbappé said on Tuesday ahead of the home match against Salzburg in the Champions League. “I couldn’t do any worse. I hadn’t come to Real Madrid to play badly. I was well physically, so it had to be more of a mental change.”
Mbappé said he was overthinking when he first arrived.
“I was thinking too much about everything, about how to do things, how to position myself on the field. … And when you think too much, you don’t play well. When you come to Real Madrid you have to be humble, the team had just won a Champions League, I couldn’t arrive and ask for everybody to just give me the ball. You have to show respect.”
Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said he was happy with how Mbappé was adapting to the squad and progressing. He said a solution for him to stop overthinking was to “go back to the basics.”
“When a player can't perform as well as he is used to, he tries to complicate things. And that doesn’t work,” Ancelotti said. “The right thing to do is to make everything simple.”
Ancelotti dismissed reports that he was planning to leave Madrid at the end of the season.
“I’ll never decide to leave Madrid, that will never be up to me,” the veteran coach said. “I'm sure it will happen some day, but I don't know exactly when it will happen. It can be after tomorrow's match or it can be five years from now.”
Real Madrid has lost half of its Champions League games and is in 20th place in the new league phase.
“We don’t have a lot of chances to make it into the top eight,” Ancelotti said. “But if we have to play the extra games we will do it as best we can. We are used to a very demanding calendar already.”
Only the top eight teams go directly to the round of 16 of the new format.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Tales Azzoni, The Associated Press
