Kylian Mbappé was 13 when he first trained with Real Madrid and 25 when he trained the second. Now he can finally play for them. And although this chronicle has long been predicted and retold, however much he said “I knew this was my destiny” and everyone else knew it was too, however inevitable it always seemed, even boring at times, it still felt a little strange when he showed up again in Valdebebas last week. He was actually here. On Thursday, the 2024-25 La Liga starts; one way or another, it will always be his, even if it turns out not to be.

That took long enough. “I was close two or three years ago,” said Mbappé. And the rest. When he was invited to train with Madrid in 2012, he was still a child, but not just a child anymore. Zinedine Zidane had picked him up at the airport and asked him to take off his shoes in the car. He met Cristiano Ronaldo, whose posters covered his bedroom wall, and took a photo himself. You’ve probably seen the pictures of him looking up at them many times. While in Paris, he even published a book called “My name is Kylian,” which tells the story of a boy who was visited by Ronaldo and Zidane in white-tinted dreams. It was anything but subtle.

Eight years have passed since his father told everyone he was a Madrid fan who admired Cristiano Ronaldo, seven years since Madrid tried to sign him. “Seven years is a long time,” he said, and that’s how it felt; in truth, it often felt like a waste. He is 25 now. It has been “done” many times but never done; now it is time, better late than never. Or maybe just better late, period, because the wait makes everything more meaningful and fitting?

At his presentation, Mbappé came out and looked up at the Santiago Bernabéu with a “Wow,” then said goodbye with “1, 2, 3, Hala Madrid” – a reference to Ronaldo, who did the same in 2009. Gareth Bale cost more than Ronaldo, and Eden Hazard did too, but until then no transfer had been as big as this one. A footballer who had long been called upon to usher in a new era after Messi and Ronaldo: almost 80,000 people were there to see it. He said he had hardly slept the night before.

That’s the part about the story, and at least at the beginning he will be the story, although the time since his presentation has shown that he will not be the only one. Now to the sport itself, and there are some questions. Mainly about where he fits in, how to put the pieces together, which might even distract from a deeper doubt: who does what Toni Kroos, a truly irreplaceable player, did?

Mbappé, Vinícius and Rodrygo occupy similar positions, or at least like to do so. Jude Bellingham is also affected; last season he was entrusted with a new role in attack – partly in response to Karim Benzema’s unexpected departure – and became the league’s most decisive player. He may have to adapt again. All four started in Wednesday night’s Super Cup final against Atalanta. They also have Brazilian striker Endrick, an 18-year-old who has expressed his admiration for an altogether more unexpected idol: Bobby Charlton. Yes, really.

“I’m not saying we’ll play the same way we used to. Something will change, but not much,” Carlo Ancelotti stressed. “I think the system we’ll use this season will be a 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2, just like last year. Sometimes we played 4-3-3, sometimes 4-4-2, sometimes 4-2-3-1; we have the means to play all three.” Mbappé says: “I’ll play where the coach tells me. I come with ambition and humility. The priority is to adapt to the collective.” One comment sounded as if he had learned it from Bale: “I don’t want to score a goal and then go home,” he stressed.

This message is now appropriate and easier to process. If Mbappé had arrived a year earlier, perhaps it would not have happened like this. This suggests that perhaps the timing is not so bad and that the human balance can be improved. He certainly comes as a superstar, but not as a savior. In these seven years he has not won the Champions League, but Madrid has done so again.

Some have dared to imagine they will now be invincible. That may be a fear, but that’s not how it usually works. Mbappé’s arrival will be good for Spanish football, La Liga president Javier Tebas has said time and again. And if those words have sounded a little needy at times, focusing more on the product than the game, this doesn’t feel like a bailout as it once may have. He needs them as much as they need him. And while he will step back into the spotlight, he hasn’t dominated Spanish football on his own over the last month or so, and he won’t do so this season either.

Because there is always something, someone. Because when it comes to what matters – playing football – Spain is very good at it. This summer they won the Euro 2024 and are perhaps the best champions the competition has ever had. They won Olympic gold. They won the European Under-19 Championship. Their women’s team are world champions. They have the Champions League winners in both men’s and women’s football. Now they have arguably the best player in the world. Probably also because Vinícius and Bellingham and the Euro 2024 shine a light on others and change everyone’s perception, including the Spanish themselves.

The best of them, Rodri, plays in England, however. Fabián Ruiz is still at PSG. Marc Cucurella drinks his Estrella and eats his paella in London. Álvaro Morata has gone to Milan, a human decision as much as a footballing one. And the dissolution of Girona, the team that challenged Madrid the most last season, was crushingly inevitable – Aleix García, Savinho, Yan Couto and Eric García are all gone.

But this success has not brought about an exodus or a weakening, a similar dispossession of the selectON. It was more of an awakening. The talent was there, waiting to be discovered. It was everywhere: the Spanish starting eleven in the final consisted of just one player from Madrid and one from Barcelona. The goals were scored by one player from Athletic and another from Real Sociedad. It probably won’t stay that way forever, but it says something, something good, that despite all the smear campaigns, Nico Williams and Martín Zubimendi are still at those clubs when the league starts.

Atlético Madrid have signed Alex Sørloth and Julian Álvarez. It’s hard to remember the last time a new signing caused so much excitement. Perhaps the warning is that the last time could be João Félix. Conor Gallagher came, saw and went and now waits for his move to be confirmed.

Dani Olmo has come home: Perhaps Germany’s most outstanding player has returned to Barcelona, ​​now coached by Hansi Flick. He joins the most exciting player there is right now: Lamine Yamal, European champion and goalscorer of The Goal against France, a teenager thrust into the glare but, they hope, with the talent to take it, to take them all. So no pressure, boy. While Ronaldo welcomed Mbappé, still a child, Lionel Messi anointed Lamine, still a baby: the most bizarre, unlikely, almost biblical story of the footballing summer, coinciding with another story written as destiny. The timing was right in the end. No, they are not alone, but here they are, thrust forward: two new faces of a familiar, epic battle fought on Spanish fields.