You know the saying “even Kylian Mbappe won’t save team X from relegation”? The game Football Manager gives the possibility to test it in reality, sort of, so we decided to test it ourselves. We took the star of Paris Saint-Germain, transferred him to MS Ashdod and ran one season to test how much influence one star, no matter how big, can have on a team that is fighting in reality against relegation.
As mentioned, we transferred Mbappe to Ashdod on a contract for one season, after which he could join any team he wanted, and at a salary of 8,000 pounds per week, so as not to financially crush the club. The start of the star’s journey in the port city was not bad at all and he was one of the main factors in their qualification to the cup final Toto, scoring a hat-trick in his debut against Hapoel Jerusalem and finishing the campaign with six goals.
And what about the debut in the league? Here things start to twist in a particularly amusing direction. MS Ashdod opened the season in a match against Maccabi Tel Aviv in Bloomfield and although they went up 0:1 early, Mbappe was sent off with a straight red in the 16th minute and suspended from three games. One of them was the Toto Cup final, in his absence Ashdod lost to Beitar Jerusalem and missed BA.
The bets for the start of the season: Ashdod fourth in red in the debut match against Maccabi Tel Aviv
At the end of the first round, Ashdod stood in the respectable fourth place, while Mbappe scored six goals and added five assists in eight appearances. In between, the Frenchman and his team knocked out Maccabi Haifa in the round of 16 of the State Cup with 2:3, but were knocked out in the quarter by Bnei Raina who went on to win the cup.
At the end of the second round, Ashdod is in fifth place, ten points away from the leader Hapoel Be’er Sheva, while Mbapa is fighting for the kingship of the goals against Din David, both with 13. In the top playoff, the team from the port city manages to reduce gaps, pass BS in the table and finish in second place, but Maccabi Haifa’s impressive top playoff gives it a fourth championship in a row.
Mbappe finished the season with 17 goals which placed him as the top scorer and with 13 assists, which also placed him as the top scorer. The Frenchman was involved in 30 goals, exactly half of all Ashdod goals this season and also won the man of the match title 14 times. At the end of the season he chose to move to Liverpool on a free transfer and continued his journey in Europe when Ashdod remained only a distant memory.
End of season table
