Thibaut Courtois says Madrid players sing songs tied to the “dictator” memes about Kylian Mbappé, who has criticized the joke.
Thibaut Courtois says jokes about Kylian Mbappé’s “dictator” memes have crossed from online fan culture into the Real Madrid dressing room. Speaking to DAZN, the goalkeeper said teammates sing some of the songs associated with the running gag. He didn’t name a particular song, so the detail is less a reveal of a specific chant than a glimpse of how the joke has traveled inside the squad.
The comments came in an interview ahead of Madrid’s Champions League match against RB Leipzig. Courtois also made the case for Mbappé to win the Ballon d’Or, while acknowledging that the team’s lack of collective success could weigh against him. Those two subjects sit uneasily together: one concerns the way teammates tease a high-profile player, the other the recognition they believe his individual season deserves.
“I think Kylian deserves it, but people vote according to their own logic,” Courtois said. He framed the decision as a choice between rewarding trophies and recognizing the individual who stood above the rest across the season. That tension is familiar in awards debates. A team’s results offer a visible measure of success, but they can also obscure the quality of a player’s work across a season.
“I am thinking especially of Kylian. I think individually nobody has been better than Kylian, but unfortunately, we have not won anything collectively.”
The dressing room’s running joke
The “dictator” label is an in-joke about Mbappé’s influence, often paired online with edited images depicting him as historical villains. Courtois says Madrid players join in by singing the accompanying songs, though he didn’t identify a particular one. The distinction matters: his comment confirms that the material has entered team banter, but doesn’t establish how often it comes up or how Mbappé responds when it does.
Mbappé has said he doesn’t find the joke funny. He argued that it showed a lack of “human awareness” by making light of murderous dictators. Courtois’s account suggests the gag remains part of the team’s dressing-room banter, even as the forward has objected to it. There’s an obvious gap between a joke’s intent and its effect; a player’s public objection gives the humor a different weight inside a close-knit squad.
Two questions about team culture
Courtois’s remarks leave a practical question hanging: does the joke remain harmless teasing for the players involved, or has Mbappé’s objection changed how it lands? A dressing room can turn a shared reference into a sign of familiarity, but that doesn’t mean everyone experiences it the same way. (And this is the part most people overlook.) The public account gives no answer about how the players have handled that difference.
That said, the Ballon d’Or discussion offers a clearer view of Courtois’s position. He believes Mbappé’s individual performance merits recognition, while conceding that voters may place greater weight on collective achievement. This is more significant than it looks: the argument shows how individual awards can become a proxy debate about what football should reward, especially when a player’s personal case and a team’s results point in different directions.
If you’re working in this space, the distinction is useful: Courtois is speaking both as a teammate and as an advocate for Mbappé’s season. His praise is direct, but it doesn’t erase the limitation he names. Madrid’s lack of collective success may shape how voters assess the campaign, and Courtois knows that argument won’t disappear simply because he believes Mbappé was the best individual performer.
The numbers here are underwhelming in one sense: Courtois offers no specific voting detail or further account of the dressing-room exchange. What he does provide is a snapshot of two unresolved tensions, between private banter and public objection, and between individual excellence and team achievement. And yet, neither comment settles how teammates or voters will ultimately respond.
The post Courtois names the song that Real Madrid dressing room sing to tease Mbappe appeared first on CaughtOffside.
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