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Vinicius Junior was Monday named by UEFA chiefs as Champions League Player of the Season after spearheading Real Madrid to European glory, with teammate Jude Bellingham picking up the young player award.
Brazilian forward Vinicius scored six goals and made five assists in Real’s victorious campaign, including the second in the 2-0 win against Borussia Dortmund in the final at Wembley on Saturday.
Victory meant Real were crowned European champions for a record-extending 15th time.
“I’m very happy to be able to win another Champions League with this club, which has given me so much,” 23-year-old Vinicius said.
England midfielder Bellingham was named as the Champions League young player of the season after his dazzling first campaign with the Spanish giants.
The 20-year-old scored four goals and provided five assists in the Champions League for Real, who also won the Spanish league title.
“I can’t put it into words,” he said. “It’s the best night of my life. It’s got to be up there in terms of the perfect season.”
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Kylian Mbappe’s inevitable transfer to Real Madrid is done.
A pursuit that dates back at least seven years – when the French superstar talked to Real Madrid before joining Paris Saint-Germain in a €180-million move – concluded Monday with Mbappe agreeing to sign for the Spanish and European champions on a free transfer.
Mbappe’s five-year contract with Los Blancos begins once his PSG deal expires June 30. The 25-year-old reportedly agreed to personal terms with Madrid in February.
“A dream come true, so happy and proud to join the club of my dreams, Real Madrid,” Mbappe wrote on X alongside pictures of him when he was younger wearing the team jacket and meeting club icon Cristiano Ronaldo.
“Nobody can understand how excited I am right now.”
(Courtesy: @KMbappe)
Last summer, Mbappe declined an option to extend his PSG contract until June 2025. The attacker was subsequently dropped from a preseason tour to Japan and temporarily trained away from the first-team squad. He was reintroduced to the matchday roster after missing just one league match, and relations between the club and player seemed to improve during the opening months of the 2023-24 campaign.
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi stated last July that it’d be “impossible” for Mbappe – arguably the best player in the world – to leave on a free transfer. Later that month, the club reportedly accepted a world-record €300-million offer from Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal for the forward. However, Mbappe didn’t entertain the opportunity, and no other transfers materialized before news of his decision to depart the Parc des Princes for nothing surfaced in February.
French superstar
Mbappe scored 256 goals and assisted 95 times over 308 appearances for Paris Saint-Germain and hoarded medals in Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, the now-defunct Coupe de la Ligue, and the Trophee des Champions. He finished as the top scorer in Ligue 1 six times. The 2023-24 season marked the fifth time in a row that he was named the best player in France’s top flight.
He started his career with Monaco, where he won one Ligue 1 title and helped fire the principality club to the 2016-17 Champions League semifinals, beating Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund along the way.
Mbappe’s club achievements
Competition
Wins
Ligue 1
7
Coupe de France
4
Coupe de la Ligue
2
Trophee des Champions
3
Mbappe has 46 goals in 77 appearances for France and succeeded Hugo Lloris as captain in March 2023. He scored four times during Les Bleus’ victorious 2018 World Cup run, including once in the final against Croatia. Mbappe finished the 2022 World Cup as top scorer with eight goals, with three of those strikes crammed into a remarkable final as France fell to Lionel Messi’s Argentina in a penalty shootout.
Now, after representing his country at Euro 2024, Mbappe will spend most weekends bewitching crowds in Spain.
“It’s hard, and I never thought it would be this difficult to announce that, to leave my country, France, Ligue 1, a championship I’ve always known, but I think I needed this, after seven years, a new challenge,” Mbappe said when he confirmed he’d leave PSG on May 10.
The new challenge
The next step in Mbappe’s career comes with one clear objective: winning the Champions League. It was PSG’s No. 1 aim throughout his time in the French capital, but the closest they got was a 1-0 loss to Bayern Munich in the 2020 final.
Mbappe didn’t carry the burden of trying to conquer Europe alone. His teammates at PSG included true greats of the game, including Messi, Angel Di Maria, Neymar, and Sergio Ramos. Still, PSG’s lavish spending couldn’t deliver European football’s top prize.
Kylian Mbappé has been directly involved in 462 goals across 445 senior appearances for club & country, averaging a goal or assist once every 73.3 minutes. ?
— Squawka (@Squawka) June 3, 2024
Not only will Mbappe share a dressing room with more huge names at the Bernabeu – he’ll form an intimidating attack with Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo, and Endrick – he also joins a club that makes winning the Champions League a habit. Real Madrid overcame RB Leipzig, Manchester City, and Bayern Munich in this season’s Champions League knockout rounds before beating Borussia Dortmund 2-0 in Saturday’s final for their record-extending 15th success in the competition.
In addition to their continental exploits, Real Madrid are the most successful team in Spanish football history with 36 La Liga titles. They clinched the 2023-24 crown with four matches to spare during the first weekend of May.
Mbappe added on Instagram: “Can’t wait to see you, Madridistas, and thanks for your unbelievable support.”
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GENEVA (AP) — Real Madrid winning the Champions League title also was a victory for Shakhtar Donetsk and defeat for Borussia Dortmund also was a loss for Eintracht Frankfurt.
Madrid’s 2-0 win Saturday in the final in London settled the last direct entries into the revamped 36-team Champions League lineup for next season.
UEFA retains an entry for the defending champion but Madrid already secured its place by winning the Spanish league title a month ago.
That entry reverts to the domestic league winner in the qualifying rounds that has the highest ranking based on results in UEFA competitions over five seasons. That is Ukraine Premier League winner Shakhtar, which gets the upgrade and the guaranteed share of Champions League prize money worth tens of millions of euros (dollars).
Dortmund qualified for the Champions League as the fifth-place team in the Bundesliga. Germany got a bonus fifth entry that UEFA now awards to the two countries whose teams performed best across this season’s European competitions. Italy got the other bonus place.
Had Dortmund beaten Madrid in the final, Germany would have got another Champions League entry for its sixth-place Bundesliga team, which was Eintracht.
Eintracht now enters the second-tier Europa League, which it won in 2022.
The 29 direct qualifiers for the next Champions League are now known and seven more places will be confirmed in the qualifying rounds that finish in August.
The new intake includes competition debutants Girona of Spain and Brest of France.
It also includes teams that last played decades ago when the competition was still known as the European Cup.
Aston Villa was the defending European champion when losing in the quarterfinals in 1983.
Bologna’s only European Cup appearance was a quick exit in the preliminary round of the 1964-65 season.
All those teams with little or no recent track record in European competitions will come out of the low-ranked seeding pot when the draw is made Aug. 29 in Monaco.
UEFA scrapped the traditional group stage in favor of a new league phase, under pressure in 2021 from the influential European Club Association whose leaders wanted more games, and a wider ranger of opponents.
The new league phase guarantees each team eight games, instead of six, and eight different opponents, instead of three.
UEFA agreed that format in principle three years ago when the ECA was strongly influenced by Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona who had secretly plotted a breakaway Super League to effectively wreck the Champions League.
Despite the UEFA concessions, those clubs — joined by nine others in Italy, Spain and England — still went ahead to launch a Super League in April 2021 that collapsed within two days. A furious backlash from fans in England and threats of legislation by the British government forced the six English clubs to withdraw.
The four Champions League finals played since April 2021 all were won by Super League clubs — Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester City — which tried to break apart the premier European competition that is now 69 years old.
The seven remaining places in the next 36-team lineup will go to five domestic champions who advance through qualifying rounds plus two teams from a separate route for runners-up, third- or fourth-place teams from high-ranking leagues.
Qualifiers could include Galatasaray, Lille, Red Star Belgrade, Salzburg and Young Boys.
Prize money for the 38 teams will be shared from a UEFA fund of about 2.44 billion euros ($2.65 billion) and the eventual champion should earn at least 150 million euros ($163 million). Each team will be guaranteed about 20 million euros ($21.7 million) even if it loses all eight games.
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Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has been handed his first start of the 2023-24 Champions League campaign as Real Madrid released their lineup over two-and-half hours before Saturday’s final against Borussia Dortmund.
Courtois replaces Andriy Lunin, who’s been dealing with an illness ahead of the London showpiece. Courtois didn’t feature for Real Madrid this season until May due to a knee ligament injury. The Belgian shot-stopper finishes this term with four La Liga appearances and an outing in the Champions League final.
Aurelien Tchouameni is a surprise inclusion on Carlo Ancelotti’s bench after he was initially ruled out of the match.
Toni Kroos is starting for his final appearance in club football. His final act in the professional game will be with the Germany squad on home soil at Euro 2024.
For Dortmund, fan favorite Marco Reus is on the bench ahead of his exit this summer. Sebastien Haller, who missed time earlier this month with an ankle issue, is also among the substitutes. Edin Terzic’s starting lineup is unchanged from the semifinal second-leg victory over Paris Saint-Germain.
