Field Gulls
When American football meets global futbol.
The Seattle Seahawks won’t be playing in the NFL’s first ever regular season game in Spain next season, but one of their star players did make a trip to the Spanish capital very recently.
Wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba shared his visit to Madrid on his Instagram Story, which included meeting Real Madrid superstar and FIFA World Cup champion Kylian Mbappe. JSN even gave Mbappe his Seahawks jersey.
The “before the hat trick” caption indicates that this was last week, when Mbappe scored three goals in the second leg of Real Madrid’s 6-3 aggregate win over English Premier League giants Manchester City to advance to the UEFA Champions League Round of 16. Mbappe scored a total of five goals over the two-legged tie. He’s one of the world’s top footballers and lethal goal-scorers, notably joining Pele as the only teenagers to score in a World Cup Final when France won in 2018. Mbappe also scored the most goals at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, including a hat trick in France’s loss to Argentina.
In the soccer world, Mbappe is universally considered among the best in the business, if not the best. Hopefully JSN is on a current trajectory in which he’ll be spoken of as one of the NFL’s best receivers. His 100-catch performance in 2024 will have fans salivating at the possibility of what’s to come next season and beyond.
