Kylian Mbappe will come across Paris Saint-Germain a year ago for the first time since the French club leaves, because the Real Madrid revolution of Xabi Alonso will receive its biggest test in the semi-final of the Club World Cup of Wednesday.
Mbappe must be remembered as a PSG legend, who spent seven productive campaigns there and eventually leaves as their top scorer of all time with 256 goals in 308 games.
But his legacy was a bit infected by the way his departure, the feeling among many that he just waited in the last half of his time in Paris to move to Madrid, the club he had dreamed of representing as a young boy.
PSG, under their Qatari president Nasser al-Khelaifi, was not happy with the way in which Mbappe chose to conclude his contract to really sign in 2024, so that they refused a transfer costs.
Since then, a bitter legal dispute has continued between the parties, with Mbappe claiming that he is 55 million euros ($ 64.4 million) in unpaid wages and bonuses from his spell in Paris.
The last turn came this week, when one of the lawyers of Mbappe AFP said that the French captain had withdrawn a complaint about moral intimidation against his former employers.
That was after the office of the public prosecutor last month revealed that an investigation had been opened after a complaint by the player about the way in which he was treated by PSG in the summer of 2023.
He believes that he was set aside by PSG and made to train with players who wanted to unload the club after he refused to agree on a new contract.
Mbappe missed a pre-season tour to Japan and the start of the next campaign before he was finally integrated into the Luis Enrique team.
All that should have been behind Mbappe a long time ago, given the way his first season went to Real on a personal level.
The 26-year-old, a World Cup winner in 2018, scored 43 goals in 56 games for his new club in all competitions until the end of the campaign in La Liga, a remarkable count.
However, Mbappe has endured frustration at the Club World Cup, not at all during the group phase because of a stomach bug that led him to need hospital treatment.
First start?
In his absence, the young attacker Gonzalo Garcia has built up the step in an impressive way, started all five games in the United States and scored four goals.
The last one was the opener in the 3-2 quarter-final victory over Borussia Dortmund in the Metlife Stadium on Saturday, but it was Mbappe who got what was ultimately the decisive goal.
He came halfway through the second half of the bank and scored a brilliant, acrobatic overhead shovel for Real's third of the afternoon in stopping time.
“He's still not perfect, not 100 percent, but he gets better every day,” Alonso said after that match about Mbappe.
“Now he will have three days to keep going and to feel better for the semi -final.”
It is difficult to imagine that Mbappe does not get its first start of the tournament against PSG, the club that won the Champions League in the season after his departure after so many years of disappointment in Europe with him in the team.
PSG came to the US Fresh by Crushing Inter Milan 5-0 in the Champions League final.
They reached the last four with a 2-0 win over Bayern Munich in Atlanta in the last eight – despite the fact that Willian Pacho and Lucas Hernandez would be sent – and don't have to be really afraid.
“It doesn't matter who we play in the semi -final. The only thing that counts is that we are there and that we want to reach the final,” said Luis Enrique, for whom this is also a special occasion, given that he spent five years with Madrid as a player in the nineties.
Alonso has just taken over as a real coach after an excellent enchantment with Bayer Leverkusen and has already shown great tactical flexibility, flittering between a central defense of four and a three-man central defense at the tournament.
It will be fascinating to see which system he chooses here, and whether Mbappe starts when he prepares to play against PSG for the first time since July 2017, when he was still an exciting teenager in Monaco.