Kylian Mbappe Fires Back at Defensive Critics: "The Point of Soccer Is to Score Goals"

Five goals in five games, and there are still people demanding answers about what he does without the ball. That, in a nutshell, is Kylian Mbappe's situation at the start of this season with Real Madrid: the team's top scorer, yet still singled out for his defensive output. The Frenchman, tired of hearing the same complaint over and over, decided to respond.

The forward, among the nominees for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, spoke with France Football about the criticism that has followed him for some time now: that he doesn't run much, that he doesn't press, that he's among the players who cover the least ground in a match. His answer was clear and left little room for interpretation.

I don't think this kind of criticism is normal, but that's what life is like for someone who's been at the top of the game for yearsKylian Mbappe

Bothered? Not exactly. Mbappe explains it almost as a matter of human behavior rather than a personal insult. He believes people tend to focus on what's missing rather than what's abundant, and in his case, what's abundant is goals.

If I don't score, people ask why I'm not scoring. Everyone has known what I'm capable of for years. And I think that's where the human factor comes into play. It's human nature to always focus on what someone isn't doing. So it's not something I take personallyKylian Mbappe

The numbers speak for him

And there are plenty of numbers to speak. Mbappe was LaLiga's top scorer last season, with 25 goals in 31 matches, after also finishing as the league's leading scorer the previous campaign. With the French national team, he's the all time leading scorer with 66 goals, a mark he reached at the 2026 World Cup at just 27 years old. On top of that comes another record few can dispute: he's the all time leading scorer in World Cup history, with 22 goals.

For him, that's the heart of the debate. Soccer, he says, comes down to something fairly simple.

Everyone has their own point of view, but I think the point of soccer is to score goals: to score one more than your opponent. A player who scores goals will never be a problem for a team, because I've never seen a team win titles without scoring a single goalKylian Mbappe

With those five goals in five matches, he's already Real Madrid's leading scorer so far this season, and he insists none of this keeps him up at night. He talks about having a "healthy" relationship with criticism, about separating the kind that helps from the kind that's just noise.

I think I have a healthy relationship with criticism. Because there's constructive criticism and there's criticism that's a bit more absurd. It's not something that scares me when it comes to making a decision. I don't think about getting criticized. I keep moving forward without hesitationKylian Mbappe

In the end, the Frenchman's message is straightforward: as long as the goals keep coming, everything else matters relatively little to him.