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| Kylian Mbappé has terrorised defences at this World Cup to take France within one win of repeating their 1998 triumph, when he was not even born. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP |
He made his debut for Monaco aged 16, became the world’s most expensive teenager at 18 and will play a World Cup final on Sunday at 19. Can anything stop the rise of Kylian Mbappé?
The life of the little football geniuses sometimes has all kinds of discord and anger. Kylian Mbappé has been through this and is bound to be held responsible for the conflicts in his early career. But this kid, deeply devoted to the game, seemed stronger than anything, on the field and off it, as he prepared from a young age to navigate the pitiless environment of football.
“His father Wilfried has videos of him as a child, in which he tells his story,” says family friend Alain Mboma. “He is four years old – four years old! – and he described the journey he wanted to take.”
“I was a dreamer when I was younger,” Mbappé confided to us a few weeks ago. “My parents did care a bit about ‘my mouth’. But now they are the ones in the wrong position.”
He had to fight to get there, guided by his own impatience, which in this case may have had some virtues. In 2015-2016, his third season in Monaco, Mbappé entered his last year as a youth team player and did not understand why Leonardo Jardim did not include him in the professional group. He had the ability, he knew it. But Jardim did not know, until the international week of November 2015.
The period is crucial, for the player and for the club, who feared losing its prized asset for free at the end of that season. Behind the scenes, moves were going on. Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool and Arsenal had already made multiple approaches. Arsène Wenger met him in person to try to convince him to join the London club. Mbappé falters, he is especially on the brink of answering PSG’s call. But, in Paris to sign the contract, he is finally convinced that Laurent Blanc, the PSG coach at the time, will not give him a chance. “We were not very far away. There were two clubs in the final – AS Monaco and PSG,” said Olivier Létang, then deputy sports director of the latter. “What was missing was the feeling he would get playing time. Because Kylian wanted to play and it was his feeling that he would have more opportunity to play at Monaco than PSG.”
It was finally Campos, tasked by the Monaco’s owners to resolve the situation, who tipped the decision in their favour.
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Kylian Mbappé on the attack for Monaco against Nantes in a Ligue 1 game in 2016. Photograph: Dave Winter/Icon Sport via Getty Images
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“I remember perfectly when Vadim [Vasilyev, vice president of AS Monaco] gave me the green light,” he recalls. “It was like a light from God, because just after, I left the changing room and I saw Kylian’s mom. I went up in the stands and spent 40 minutes with her. I explained to her, with my experience of big clubs, the advantages of Kylian staying in Monaco. I told her the most important thing is that the day Kylian gets into the changing room of a big club, he hears the other players say: ‘Hello Kylian, welcome, we love you a lot.’ If he had left Monaco at that time, he would have arrived in a large changing room, with great ego, like a stranger. They would have looked at him and said: ‘Who is this kid?’”
On March 6 2016, it’s official: Mbappé signed his first professional contract and committed to Monaco until 2019, with a signing-on bonus of about €3m and an evolutionary monthly salary: €85,000 the first year, €100,000 the second and €120,000 the third. Considerable sums for a player of his age.
Not everyone is so impressed, however. The coach of France’s under-17 team, Jean-Claude Giuntini, who did not respond to our requests for an interview, considered Mbappé to be an inconsistent talent. In 2015, he did not even summon the striker to compete in the European Championship in Bulgaria that was won by the Les Bleuets. He preferred Odsonne Édouard (now at Celtic), who was crowned top scorer of the competition. The following season, in the under‑18s, Giuntini still did not select the Monaco player. He did not believe in him and criticised Mbappé for a lack of defensive involvement and his attitude. Suddenly, Ludovic Batelli, the under‑19 coach, decided to gazump him.
“At the time, I was an orphan of Ousmane Dembélé, who rose very quickly to the under-21 side,” says Batelli. “There was a missing link and I thought of Kylian. I inquired about him. I was told little things about his character, about his attitude. I was told that he had an individualistic relationship on the pitch, sometimes showing small moods. I ignored all that. I just focused on what I saw when he came with us. And there, I saw a future prodigy, which, in addition, adhered to all our codes.”
This was despite a considerable age gap. “In fact, he was two years younger,” says Batelli. “And when we see, at that age, the importance of the differences from a size, weight, maturity, intelligence point of view … it was fantastic. He had an ability to express and analyse that I have rarely seen in kids of this age.”
His new teammates adopted him immediately. “When he arrived in the group, we had to play the elite qualifying round for the European Championship,” said Lucas Tousart, the Lyon midfielder. “We go to Serbia and we have three games to play. We must finish first and it is him who scored the goal that allowed us to win the last game and go to the finals.”
A few weeks later, in the summer of 2016, Mbappé, still only 17, and his team are crowned European Under-19 champions. He scored five goals in five games during the competition, including two in the semi-final.
“In the final [against Italy, won 4-0] he also makes this kind of sombrero flick over the player for the fourth goal,” remembers Batelli, still as much blown away by what he saw. “This gesture, despite all the fatigue of the competition … I am sure that it was in the third or fourth minute of the match, but he was still ready to try it. And that’s Kylian Mbappé.”
A magnificent player of promise for French football. “I’ve already worked with Cristiano Ronaldo and I can make a mental comparison between the two,” admits Campos. “They are the same. They are born to be champions, to be stars, to win the most beautiful things. Today, Kylian is 60% of his true potential and 60% is already one of the best in the world. Imagine him at 100%. You imagine? He will be amazing.”
This is an extract from France Football’s article that was published in September 2017
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