Real Madrid are well-placed to go back-to-back in the Champions League, having made it into the last eight of the competition.
Kylian Mbappe will be especially keen for Los Blancos to claim glory once again, as it would be his first time winning the iconic tournament in his career.
Last week’s nail-biting round of 16 victory over Atletico Madrid has set up a Champions League quarter-final against Arsenal, and if Real Madrid progress from that tie, Mbappe could come face-to-face with former club Paris Saint-Germain. However, he is not thinking about that possibility yet, as he told Le Parisien (via Marca).
"It would be the worst mistake to think about that. Last year everyone took a PSG-Real Madrid final for granted and in the end we didn’t make it to the final. So I only think about Arsenal, who will be our opponents in the quarter-finals, and my team, Real Madrid. We participate in all competitions. We can achieve something great in this final part of the season and we have to focus on that, on ourselves and on the games that await us. This kind of thing has to be left to the general public, to people who have the right to let themselves go or speculate. We don’t have time for that."
In recent months, Mbappe has been locked in a legal battle against his former club, which he gave a small update on.
"It is in the hands of the lawyers. I think it will be resolved soon, so it’s not something I’m worried about."
Mbappe also spoke on the different spells of form that he has went through since making the move to Real Madrid last summer.
"It’s not the first time I’ve gone through a situation like this. What happens is that my status is now different and so are the expectations and the repercussions. I’ve had other difficult moments, but they were talked about less because I didn’t have the same status."
"Yes, I have understood it. I keep saying that what has changed is everything around me, the way people look at me, more than me, who at first had a hard time. A European Championship that you don’t win, in which you don’t play well, an end of the season at PSG in which you play much less… It’s an accumulation of things, injuries, bad performances, things that I haven’t experienced much in my career and that force you to have to work again to become the player you can be."