Thierry Henry breaks down Kylian Mbappe brilliance as Luis Enrique admits to planning on life without him

With a brace to push Paris Saint-Germain into the final eight of the Champions League in a 2-1 victory over Real Sociedad, Kylian Mbappe once again showcased his greatness. While he may be on his way to Real Madrid during the summer, that doesn’t mean that Mbappe isn’t committed to ending his time in Paris on the highest note possible by lifting the Champions League, and he’s now one step closer to doing it thanks to his excellent finishing. 

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Not only is his prolific finishing one of the reasons why Real Madrid covet Mbappe but also it’s a moment that legendary striker and CBS Sports analyst Theirry Henry wanted to highlight on the CBS Sports Champions League Post-Game Show on Tuesday. Henry, the coach of the France U-21 team and the man who will be coaching the nation at the Olympics this summer, will hope to have Mbappe for the competition and see similar production.

Here’s the first of his two goals:

“I’m going to show you how difficult it is, and please, this guy makes it look easy,” Henry said. “You need to be ahead of the ball … but very important, the last touch he did was there, the one after was striking the ball so that touch that he makes to be ahead of the ball, he needs to make sure that he touches it well enough for it to come here to finish, not there, but here with your shoulder facing the two posts … Now, the goalkeeper is going to stop, he’s not active he can’t really move.”

“[The goalkeeper] thinks that he’s really going to go there because he opened his body up to finish at generic power. Now, the next step, look at his shoulders. This is why you have to come back into it. When you come back into it, the goalkeeper believes that you’re going to open up because it doesn’t leave you a lot of space but because you froze him going like that … it’s very difficult now to lift your leg because of that body position and that’s why the big man is special.” 

Continuing, Henry talks about how this is a tactic that Mbappe has practiced for the last two years which is one of the things that makes him so special. Having the talent to beat players on the dribble when you have the ball is important but so is putting in the work to develop balance and make impressive finishes look easy due to muscle memory.

Breaking down his own performance, Mbappe kept things a bit simpler. 

“It’s what I do, I like to do what I can do. My job is to help the team and to score goals, to help offensively and defensively and today I did a nice job,” Mbappe said.

When he has 34 goals and seven assists in only 34 appearances in all competitions this season, Mbappe is doing quite a good job but it’s these goals in the Champions League that will define his career with PSG as any ending that doesn’t involve lifting the title isn’t a proper one. 

With Mbappe moving on during the summer, manager Luis Enrique has already been open about the fact that the team needs to learn to win without Mbappe. Only playing 138 minutes during PSG’s last three league matches, Mbappe has been rotated more than usual but Enrique did offer a reason following the win over Real Sociedad. 

 “Apparently he will not be there in the immediate future. We will have to test other teammates,” Enrique said.

While the new era of PSG and Luis Enrique figuring out what members of the team can compete without Mbappe is something that can start now due to their lead in the league, the rotation has a bonus of unleashing a fresh Mbappe on Champions Leauge. Few other teams remaining in the competition have a lead as substantial as PSG’s nine-point cushion atop Ligue 1 so even if they take lumps playing league matches without Mbappe, it won’t cost them the title but it does raise their chances at lifting the Champions League title.