Real Madrid open the 2026/27 La Liga season away at Espanyol on Saturday night, and the storyline that ONE frames ahead of kick-off is simple: can Kylian Mbappe win a third consecutive Pichichi trophy as the Spanish league's top scorer?
It would be an achievement no Real Madrid player has managed since Hugo Sanchez strung together three straight scoring titles in the mid-to-late 1980s. Even Cristiano Ronaldo, for all his goals in white, only ever won it in two consecutive seasons, 2013/14 and 2014/15, before Lionel Messi and others interrupted his run.
Mbappe's case for a third is built on a remarkable opening act in Madrid. According to ONE, he has scored 86 goals in his first two seasons at the club — 31 to claim the Pichichi in his debut campaign and 25 more to retain it last season, a tally of 56 La Liga goals across the two years alone. Real Madrid's own website confirmed both trophies, the 2024/25 award presented in November and the 2025/26 one collected in May.
The Frenchman is also within touching distance of a personal milestone: ONE notes he sits 14 goals short of reaching 100 for Real Madrid, a landmark that could realistically fall before the turn of the year given his scoring rate.
There is a specific subplot to Saturday's trip to the RCDE Stadium, too. ONE recalls that in the corresponding fixture during Mbappe's debut season, then-manager Carlo Ancelotti was furious over a heavy challenge on his forward, telling reporters afterwards that the foul was inexplicable and criticising both the referee's decision and the VAR review. The report frames Saturday as Mbappe's chance to finally get on the scoresheet at a ground where he has yet to find the net for Real Madrid.
None of that changes the scale of the challenge ahead. Only two players in Real Madrid's history have won three or more Pichichis in a row: Alfredo Di Stefano, who took four straight in the late 1950s, and Sanchez, whose four Pichichis across his Bernabeu career included a run of three consecutive titles. Matching that company, as ONE lays it out, would put Mbappe in genuinely rarefied territory for a club that has fielded some of the greatest goalscorers the European game has seen.
For now it is a season-opening storyline rather than a settled outcome — 34 league games lie between Saturday's kick-off and any verdict on the Pichichi race. But few players start a title defence with as strong a platform as Mbappe carries into this campaign, on the back of 59 goals in the 2025 calendar year alone, a mark ONE says matched Ronaldo's best output in a single calendar year for the club.
