Jude Bellingham vs Kylian Mbappé
A No 10 who scored 23 goals in his first Real Madrid season, and the centre-forward who joined a year later: opponents at two World Cups, and team-mates in 95 games by 14 October 2026.
By the Oddsivio teamLast reviewed Stats updated
Last season · club and country together · official matches
Who does what?
Kylian Mbappé scored more goals and created more chances last season; they were level on pass completion.
What separates them
2 of 4 pass both our tests: a big enough gap, and sure enough to hold.
- Bellingham
- Mbappé
- Typical forwards
- Goals per 90Mbappé led0.3915 goals1.1057 goals
About 2.8 times as many goals: about 21 more over 30 full matches.
Held up next season: about 9 in 10
- Chances created per 90Mbappé led1.661 chances2.5128 chances
About 26 more chances created over 30 full matches for Mbappé than Bellingham.
Held up next season: about 9 in 10
- Assists per 90Mbappé slightly ahead0.166 assists0.2513 assists
Gaps like this held up about 6 in 10 times: not often enough to name a leader.
- Pass completion share of passes completedLevel88%50%100%86%
Too small a gap against typical forwards to name a leader. Pass completion depends a lot on role and team.
Per 90 = per 90 minutes played, so different minutes compare fairly.
Does it hold up?
Without penalties
Kylian Mbappé still led (0.81 vs 0.39 per 90; 42 goals to 15).
Bellingham 0 of 15 goals were penaltiesMbappé 15 of 57 goals were penalties
How they play · volume, not a lead
Jude Bellingham made far more tackles (2.4 vs 0.2 per 90) and made far more interceptions (0.7 vs 0.1 per 90) last season.
Why this comparison
Jude Bellingham's first season at Real Madrid, 2023–24, came after Karim Benzema had left, and Real had no regular centre-forward: Joselu, on loan from Espanyol, started 18 of their 55 games. Bellingham, usually the most advanced midfielder, scored 23 goals as Real won La Liga and the Champions League. After the final at Wembley on 1 June 2024, asked on TNT Sports about Kylian Mbappé, he said a clinical No 9 was perhaps the one small thing the team was missing, and that Mbappé would take them to another level if he came. Two days later Real announced that Mbappé would join on a free transfer when his Paris Saint-Germain contract ran out. On the night of the final, José Mourinho, then working as a television pundit, had predicted that Bellingham would score fewer goals, because his position would change.
Mourinho's forecast came true. Mbappé scored 44 goals in his first season and 42 in his second, while Bellingham's club total fell from 23 to 15, and then to eight in a season interrupted by shoulder surgery and a hamstring injury. Mourinho took over in the summer of 2026, and in all nine games both started up to 14 October 2026 he used Bellingham as the No 10 behind Mbappé, the role of 2023–24.
Every number · last season
| BellinghamJude Bellingham | Stat | MbappéKylian Mbappé |
|---|---|---|
3,442 | Minutes | 4,674 |
50 | Matches | 56 |
71.72Important · 40 club games · as of 2026-10-22 | Current squad importance | 80.98Star · 40 club games · as of 2026-10-22 |
0.3915 in total | goals per 90 | 1.1057 in total |
0.166 in total | assists per 90 | 0.2513 in total |
1.661 in total | chances created per 90 | 2.5128 in total |
1.661 in total | shots per 90 | 4.1215 in total |
3.2124 in total | take-ons tried per 90 | 4.9257 in total |
2.493 in total | tackles per 90 | 0.29 in total |
0.725 in total | interceptions per 90 | 0.15 in total |
8.1309 in total | duels won per 90 | 3.8199 in total |
88% | pass completion | 86% |
Goals and assists are counted from match events; the other counts come from the provider's detailed match stats. Squad importance describes the current club role over its recent club-game window; it is independent of the comparison window.
Have they played each other?
Both of their competitive meetings as opponents came at World Cups. In the quarter-final at Al Khor, Qatar, on 10 December 2022, both started and played the whole game, Bellingham, then 19, on the left of England's midfield and Mbappé on the left of France's attack; neither scored, and France won 2–1 after Harry Kane missed a second penalty. In the third-place game at Miami Gardens, Florida, on 18 July 2026, Bellingham began on the bench, as both sides made seven changes after losing their semi-finals. Mbappé scored twice and set up Bradley Barcola's goal; Bellingham came on in the 79th minute and scored the last goal of England's 6–4 win, in the eighth minute of added time. As team-mates, both had played in 95 of Real Madrid's 134 competitive games from Mbappé's debut on 14 August 2024 to 14 October 2026, and they had started 76 of them together. Real won 62, drew nine and lost 24. The one shoot-out among them, at Atlético Madrid in the Champions League in March 2025, counts as the defeat it was on the night, 1–0 after extra time; Real went through on penalties, and both scored their kicks. Both scored in 14 of the 95 games, and Real won all 14. We checked the list below against ESPN's line-ups, game by game, and found nothing missing; it grows by one the day after each new game together. Their next Clásico was due at the Camp Nou on 25 October 2026. No England–France game was on the calendar: the two countries had been drawn in separate Nations League groups.
Looking up their matches…
What the numbers don't show
The card above measures Bellingham against forwards, although most of his minutes have come in midfield, and that shapes its rows. In the 42 games both started under Ancelotti, ESPN's line-ups put Bellingham on the left of midfield 21 times and at No 10 17 times; in 14 under Xabi Alonso, more often on the left than at No 10; in 11 under Álvaro Arbeloa in 2026, on the left or right of the midfield, never as the No 10. His tackles and interceptions, where he does far more than Mbappé, sit under the card as volume rather than a lead.
The 2025/26 window also counts the World Cup of that summer: Bellingham played as England's No 10 behind Kane in six of his seven starts and scored seven, and Mbappé scored ten. It counts penalties as well: in all competitions for Real Madrid from August 2024 to 14 October 2026, Mbappé took 25 of the team's 41 penalties and Bellingham two. The first was a handover. At home to Getafe on 1 December 2024, four days after missing one at Liverpool, Mbappé let Bellingham take the penalty, and he scored; Ancelotti said the two had decided between themselves.
Most of the help between them runs one way. On ESPN's match data, up to 14 October 2026 Bellingham had set up eight of Mbappé's Real Madrid goals, among them the very first, in the UEFA Super Cup in Warsaw in August 2024, and the opener of the October 2025 Clásico, which Bellingham then won with a goal of his own; the latest came against Real Sociedad in August 2026. Mbappé had set up two of Bellingham's, both in 2025–26. Assist counts depend on the provider: for each of Bellingham's three full seasons at Real Madrid, the club's own assist figures are lower than the ones used here.
Estimated value
Kylian Mbappé's Oddsivio estimated value is higher: €193m (#5 of 9,330 players valued) to Jude Bellingham's €106m (#18 of 9,330 players valued). Bellingham's estimate rose 3% since season start; Mbappé's estimate rose 6% since season start.Oddsivio estimated value — a model estimate from recent performance data, not betting advice.
Jude Bellingham
Oddsivio estimated value
€106m
+3% since season start
#18 of 9,330 players valued#5 of 501 in La Liga
Kylian Mbappé
Oddsivio estimated value
€193m
+6% since season start
#5 of 9,330 players valued#2 of 501 in La Liga
Questions fans ask
Did Mbappé's arrival cost Bellingham goals?
Not in the simple sense of Mbappé taking his chances. Bellingham scored 23 goals in 42 games in 2023–24, 0.57 per 90 minutes; from Mbappé's debut to 14 October 2026 he scored 26 in 108, 0.28 per 90. Yet his rate barely moved with Mbappé on or off the pitch: on ESPN's substitution times, 21 of the 26 came with Mbappé on the field, at 0.29 per 90 minutes played together, and five, a small sample, with him off it, at 0.26. What changed more was where Bellingham played, a change made partly to fit Mbappé in. In October 2024 Carlo Ancelotti explained one such move: the left was more crowded, because Mbappé liked to play there and combine with Vinícius Júnior, so Bellingham would try the right. In 2023–24 he started 41 games, 27 of them as the No 10 on ESPN's line-ups; over the next two seasons that fell to 28 of 85, as he was used more often on the left, and at times on the right and deeper, and his left shoulder, which he had dislocated at Dortmund in 2022, came out several more times before he had surgery in July 2025. On 7 January 2026, at a press conference before the Spanish Super Cup semi-final, he said that with a natural striker who scored 40 or 50 goals a season he no longer needed to be so far forward, and that goals had never been the most important thing for him. Back at No 10 under Mourinho he had three goals in ten Real Madrid games up to 14 October 2026, and England's coach, Thomas Tuchel, called him a natural goalscorer that month.
Mbappé or Bellingham: who is better?
That is the card's call, made again from the games in whichever window you pick, and it rates both players as forwards, which fits Mbappé's job more closely than Bellingham's. Mbappé's record is goals: 95 for Real Madrid in 113 games up to 14 October 2026, La Liga's top scorer in 2024–25 and 2025–26, the Golden Boot at the 2022 and 2026 World Cups, and 22 World Cup goals, the most by any man. Bellingham's is range and big occasions: named the best player in La Liga for 2023–24, his first season in Spain, when he also set up Vinícius's goal in the Champions League final; third in the 2024 Ballon d'Or, three places above Mbappé; and an England record of seven goals at one World Cup, in 2026. Before the semi-finals, Wayne Rooney said Bellingham had been the best player at the tournament for him, while naming Mbappé and Haaland as the best in the world. By October 2026 each had what the other lacked: Mbappé won the World Cup in 2018 but not the Champions League, and Bellingham won the Champions League and La Liga in 2023–24, the season before Mbappé joined, but no senior trophy with England.
Do Bellingham and Mbappé get on?
Everything either has said on the record about the other has been warm. After setting up Mbappé's first Real Madrid goal in August 2024, Bellingham called him unbelievable and a leader on the pitch. That November, before a game at Liverpool, he said the criticism of Mbappé was a bit over the top, and that it was scary, because he saw him every day in training and knew he would only get better. In January 2026, after the Bernabéu had whistled Bellingham, Mbappé said that when Bellingham was fit he was, without question, one of the best players in the world. The talk of friction comes from video clips and second-hand reports. Two clips were widely shared: one from the tunnel at Anfield at half-time in November 2024, in which Bellingham did not seem to notice Mbappé trying to catch his attention, and one from the end of the World Cup third-place game in July 2026, after which no handshake between them was seen, although they had shaken hands before kick-off. In May 2026 RMC's Spain correspondent, Edgar Groleau, said on the radio that they had had a short verbal dispute at half-time of a league game, which he placed in February. In July Mundo Deportivo, relaying other reports, tied the tension to reports that Mbappé had criticised some team-mates for not backing Xabi Alonso, and that Bellingham was among those who had not. Neither player commented on those reports, though in January, after Alonso left, Bellingham had dismissed reports that he had fallen out with the coach as 'damaging misinformation'. On 30 August 2026 Mourinho said that so far he could see empathy and collective work between Bellingham, Mbappé and Vinícius, and no problem with them.
Who scored more at the 2026 World Cup, Mbappé or Bellingham?
Mbappé, with ten goals to Bellingham's seven. Mbappé scored in six of France's eight games and became the first player to win the Golden Boot at two World Cups. His two goals against Senegal in the opening game took him past Olivier Giroud's 57 as France's record scorer, and his two against England took his World Cup total to 22. Bellingham's seven came in five games: one each against Croatia and Panama, two in the round of 16 in Mexico City, two against Norway in the quarter-final, the second of them the winner in extra time, and the last goal against France. Only Lionel Messi, with eight, finished between Mbappé and the two players on seven, Bellingham and Erling Haaland. Both teams went out in the semi-finals, France 2–0 to Spain on 14 July and England 2–1 to Argentina the next day, and Spain won the final.
What have Bellingham and Mbappé won together?
Two trophies, both in 2024: the UEFA Super Cup against Atalanta in August, in Mbappé's first game for the club, and the Intercontinental Cup against Pachuca in Lusail, Qatar, in December. After that Barcelona beat them in three finals, the Spanish Super Cup in January 2025 and January 2026 and the Copa del Rey in April 2025; Paris Saint-Germain beat them 4–0 in the Club World Cup semi-final in July 2025; Arsenal knocked them out of the Champions League in the 2025 quarter-finals and Bayern Munich in 2026; and Real were runners-up in La Liga both times. Before they were team-mates, Bellingham won the DFB-Pokal with Borussia Dortmund in 2021, then the Spanish Super Cup, La Liga and the Champions League in 2023–24. Mbappé's honours include the 2018 World Cup and the 2021 Nations League with France, and seven French league titles, one with Monaco and six with Paris Saint-Germain.
Are Bellingham and Mbappé on the 2026 Ballon d'Or list?
Yes: the 30-name shortlist of 8 September 2026 had both, along with two other Real Madrid players, Vinícius and Marc Cucurella, who had joined from Chelsea that summer, and the award was due at the London Palladium on 26 October, the day after the Clásico. That evening, after a 2–1 win over Inter, Mbappé said it was a great opportunity and a good year for him, though he wanted the Champions League with Real Madrid more than anything. In the three previous years they finished in different orders: in 2023 Mbappé was third and Bellingham 18th, and the winner of the Kopa Trophy, for the best player under 21; in 2024 Bellingham was third and Mbappé sixth; in 2025 Mbappé was seventh and Bellingham 23rd.