Kylian Mbappe netted his 38th goal of the season to become the highest-scoring Real Madrid player in their debut campaign with the club.
Kylian Mbappe has made history for Real Madrid in his debut season.
The Frenchman netted his 37th and 38th goals for Los Blancos inside the opening 14 minutes of Sunday’s Clasico against LaLiga leaders Barcelona.
Mbappe scored from a penalty he won before slotting home to double his tally after getting in behind Barca’s high line.
That double saw him become the highest-scoring player for Madrid across all competitions in a debut season for the club, doing so in 53 games.
Mbappe has overhauled some greats to land his record, drawing comparisons to a legend of the club in Cristiano Ronaldo in the process.
He breezed past Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ronaldo (both 33 goals in their debut seasons) before dethroning Ivan Zamorano, who netted 37 times in 1992-93 (45 games).
Mbappe left Paris Saint-Germain as their top scorer last term, netting 44 goals in all competitions as he helped them to win Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, in which he finished as the top scorer, and the Trophee des Champions.
And he could not have asked for a better start to his Madrid career, helping the club secure the UEFA Super Cup last August by scoring their second goal in a 2-0 win against Atalanta.
In fact, he became the first player to score on his competitive Madrid debut since Jude Bellingham against Athletic Bilbao in August 2023 and the first to do so in the Super Cup since Marco Asensio versus Sevilla in 2016.
However, he did not have the same immediate impact in LaLiga, failing to score in his first three games before opening his account with a brace to secure a 2-0 win over Real Betis on September 1.
He has since scored 26 of his goals in the Spanish top flight.
Seven of his haul came in the Champions League before Madrid were dumped out by Arsenal at the quarter-final stage, with the rest of his goals spread across the Copa del Rey (two, including one in their final defeat to Barcelona), the Supercopa de Espana (one), the Super Cup (one) and the Intercontinental Cup (one).
His strike in the latter also saw him become just the third player to score in each of his first two finals for Madrid across all competitions in the last 10 years, after Gareth Bale in 2014 and Asensio in 2017.
He is the club’s top scorer this season, recording his tally from 34.88 expected goals (xG).
Mbappe has scored seven penalties, while 32 of his goals have come from his right foot and six from his left.
Having suffered some early setbacks after arriving at Madrid, including a couple of injury blows, Mbappe has well and truly put that behind him since the turn of the year, netting 24 times in 2025.
That includes two hat-tricks, with his first coming in LaLiga in January before getting another against Manchester City in the Champions League.
It took him just 19 LaLiga games to net his first treble for the club, with only Van Nistelrooy (two games), Bale (nine) and Emmanuel Adebayor (14) doing so quicker (also 19 for Ronaldo Nazario).
Mbappe’s tally is not only a Madrid record, but a high for any LaLiga debutant.
Lewandowski had set the previous record for the highest-scoring debut season by a player for a LaLiga team (since Opta records began in 2014-15) when he netted 33 goals for Barcelona in 2022-23. Mbappe equalled his tally on March 29 with a brace against Leganes.
Across the top five European leagues, only Erling Haaland, who scored 52 goals in his first season as a Premier League player, and Harry Kane (44 goals in his maiden campaign as a Bundesliga player), have netted more times during their debut seasons in the 21st century (all competitions).