Kylian Mbappe is not a young man used to being eclipsed. In his young career to date, he already has an impressive list of achievements to his name including the Kopa Trophy, three Ligue 1 titles and the World Cup, having become the first teenager since Pele in 1958 to score twice in the final.
It is a stunning roll of success, yet in Paris Saint-Germain’s 2-1 Champions League defeat to Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday, he was totally upstaged by the performance of Erling Haaland. It is perhaps the first time in his professional career that he has been outshone by a player his junior, and Haaland managed to do so in convincing fashion.
While Neymar could grumble in the mixed zone about a lack of sharpness, caused by what he clearly perceived as PSG’s overly cautious approach with a rib injury, Mbappe could have few such complaints.
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Since his touchline spat with head coach Thomas Tuchel - when he was replaced against Montpellier on February 1 - he played a full part in three successive matches before being rested for the 4-4 draw against Amiens just three days before the trip to the Ruhr Valley.
While his numbers have remained impressive – he has 24 goals and 16 assists in 29 matches this season – there can be little doubt that he has been somewhat less effective in recent fixtures, with his overall contribution since the winter break on something of a slide.
In his last seven fixtures, for example, he has scored three goals and created two more, very satisfactory figures for the average player, but Mbappe has long proven that he is of a superior quality to his peers.
Although he provided an assist for Neymar at Signul Iduna Park with a trademark burst of acceleration into the box, then an accurate square pass for his Brazilian counterpart to turn in from close range, he was much too easily nullified for long periods and typified the offensive malaise that his side showed throughout.
While there were many disappointments in the PSG side, former Germany international Klaus Allofs picked out the striker as being the greatest let down for the Ligue 1 champions.
“PSG lacked cohesion, creativity in their play going forward,” he explained to L’Equipe. “They lacked mobility and rhythm. They improved after an hour, but their defensive midfielders were non-existent. Marco Verratti crossed the line when he was booked for arguing at the end of the game and he lost the ball too often.
“But for me, the most disappointing was Mbappe. He hardly participated in the game. He was transparent.”
The striker was not helped by a surprise shift into a 3-4-3 formation that saw him play as the central forward, depriving him of the room he needs to run. However, the performance simply continued the trend of recent weeks. He has been considerably less sharp for a longer period than in any previous point in his career.
Given the figures involved, it is hard to call what Mbappe is experiencing currently a slump as such, but it certainly represents a dip.
Aside from the 2017-18 season, when he transferred from Monaco to PSG in a blockbuster late-August move, he has consistently punched his weight with regard to his xG [expected goals] statistic – the measure of how many goals he would be expected to score from the shots he had taken.
In his breakout season with Monaco, his numbers were dizzying: he scored 15 goals when his xG figure was 6.86 – meaning he struck more than double the tally of the average player. Last term, he struck 33 times for an xG of 27.94, while this season he still posts a decent 15 goals from an xG of 13.72.
Since the 3-3 draw with his former club on January 12, however, he has scored four times but has an xG figure of 5.4 – a rare prolonged period when he has struggled in front of goal.
He is down on other key offensive metrics during that period too: his big chance conversion percentage is 27.3 per cent, down from a career average of well above 40%, while his overall conversion rate is around 16% - again well below what is expected of him.
A first significant injury of his career, suffered back in August and which kept him out for six weeks, was certainly a disruptive influence on the campaign. Meanwhile, luck has played a part. Two of the eight occasions Mbappe has hit the woodwork in his Ligue 1 career have come in the last six weeks, so he is not misfiring by much.
But perhaps the most telling statistic is that he has already played 176 senior games in a career that is barely four years old.
Having played on average over 40 club matches per year since he turned 17, it would be unreasonable to think that a lull in his incredible trajectory would not occur at some point. However, it does throw into doubt the wisdom of putting his own name forward to play in both Euro 2020 and the Olympics this summer – two intense competitions that will run throughout the whole of the close-season period.
Even the young superstar will have to be closely managed to ensure he does no lasting damage, either mental or physical.
Mbappe’s achievements to this point in his career are comparable with any player in the history of the game, but this is proving to be a testing period. He cannot hog the spotlight all the time, but if his level has not picked up to its usual standard by the time PSG host Dortmund on March 11 that could spell trouble for PSG.