Kylian Mbappe-Vinicius Jr Left Wing Dilemna

After years of twists and turns that would shame even the best Hollywood thrillers, Kylian Mbappe will finally join Real Madrid at the end of the current season. With this comes to and end one of the biggest transfers saga in recent memory. The Kylian Mbappe transfer timeline has seen it all from an almost completed deal in the summer of 2022 that ended with him staying at PSG following a lucrative contract to Real Madrid President Florentino Perez stating ‘This Mbappe is not the Mbappe I wanted’ . However, with the Frenchman joining Los Blancos, a key question emerges: for the last few years, Mbappe has been vocal about playing on the left wing. This demand made the upper hierarchy at PSG sweat as Neymar was donning the role while Mbappe played as the centre-forward.

The 25-year-old has played as a winger for the French national team, helping them win one World Cup and reach the final in the other. However, at Real Madrid, Mbappe faces competition for the left-wing spot with perhaps the most in-form and clutch player in the position, Vinicius Jr.

With this addition, Real Madrid now boasts an incredible triumvirate of Vinicius, Mbappe, and Rodrygo in attack. But how will Carlo Ancelotti solve Mbappe’s left-wing dilemma?

For this, we need to compare the two players and see which strategy could best be suited to harness the sky-high talent of the duo.

Vinicius Jr vs Kylian Mbappe heatmap comparison

One of the best ways to see a player’s positional brilliance is to analyse their heatmap. And when seeing both Mbappe and Vinicius Jr’s heatmap, it shows striking similarity. Both players love to use the inside left channel to bring the ball back on top of their favoured right foot, giving them a better chance of scoring, dribbling, or finding a teammate in a better situation.

Data analytics site xvalue categorises both of them as a one-to-one explorer, which means both are explosive players who use pace and dribbling skills to bamboozle their way past the opposition players. It is a trick they have pulled off again at the biggest stage.

However, since their methodology is very similar, it does throw up a challenge to ensure they don’t get in the way of one another during the game.

Vinicius Jr vs Kylian Mbappe stats comparison

Another way of finding who the better player is through stats. However, this season, Vinicius has played far fewer minutes for Madrid because of injuries. So, comparing the 2022-23 season, where both played nearly identical…