UNFP trophies – Best player of the year, does Mbappé sign the best season in the history of an L1 player?

But the exercise is necessarily limited since the assists have only been counted since 2008. If we forget the figures, there remains this feeling of intense domination. Rarely has a player from a French champion club embodied his team’s season so much. All alone, at the top. Since August, in Paris and in Ligue 1, there is Mbappé and the others. But at the height of his omnipotence, Ibrahimovic was able to count on a gluttonous Edinson Cavani (19 goals in 2015/2016) and a generous Angel Di Maria (18 assists). This season, Mbappé has taken care of everything, all by himself. All those who accompanied him in attack (Neymar, Messi, Di Maria, Icardi etc.) evolved below their standards and, for the most part, light years from what was expected of them.

Has a French champion ever been so dependent on a player?

The goals and assists of the boy from Bondy brought 31 points to the champion of France. Without them, PSG would therefore be 11th. For comparison, in his stratospheric season, Zlatan Ibrahimovic netted 23 points for Paris (despite his 38 goals and 13 assists) as the margin over the competition was much wider. Without him, Paris would still have ended up on the throne. In their heyday, Saint-Etienne, Lyon and OM, to name but a few, were never so dependent on Hervé Revelli, Jean-Michel Larqué, Juninho, Sonny Anderson, Karim Benzema, Jean- Pierre Papin or Josip Skoblar as Kylian Mbappé’s PSG today. This is due as much to the weakness of the other Parisian stars as to the level of the French international. Perhaps because for the first time in its history, Ligue 1 has the best player in the world at the moment.