Apès France – Austria – Blues – Words, deeds: Kylian Mbappé, absolute monarch

This is also what distinguishes great players from legends. Always be there, and even a little more, when you expect them. Either at the rendezvous of the biggest matches or when the context, sporting or extra-sporting, calls for a clear, clear and precise answer. In the case of Kylian Mbappé, the facts are stubborn. There is what he says, there is what he does and there is what he gives on the pitch. Generally, everything aligns at the moment he chooses to offer a little more majesty to an already unique career. At 23, let’s remember it all the same.

This week, he first bent the FFF, just that, on the issue of image rights. An express strike from the Parisian, and here is the Fed ready to review its way of operating and bend over backwards in front of its star. Mbappé may have repeated that “the whole team wanted this“, it is undoubtedly true but it is he who led and embodied the fight. This victory is therefore first and foremost his. Two days later, awaited at the turning point as so often in his career, he responded with a certain form of panache by demolishing Austria with an extraordinary goal.

“If Mbappé had played with us tonight, the game might not have been the sameresigned Ralf Rangnick, the Austrian coach. But unfortunately we don’t have Kylian Mbappé.” A somewhat fragmented observation but which sums up well the influence taken by the kid from Bondy.

It’s not the first time, nor the last either, that he responds when the pressure is immense and he has every reason to bend under its weight. We will remember three key moments of his ascent which perfectly sums up what unique wood is made of the one who never refuses the obstacle, quite the contrary.

• February 2021 – Barcelona – PSG: Kylian Mbappé is not then the man of the big meetings in Paris, he leaves that to Neymar like an average Final 8 2020. In 9 knockout matches in C1, his record is far from the player he claims to be: one goal and three assists. Mbappe is yet to sit at the table with Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo. His match in Catalonia will overturn everything and his hat-trick at Camp Nou signs his true birth certificate in the Champions League with Paris.

• October 2021 – Final Four of the League of Nations: After a Euro, and a last missed shot on goal, an international comeback dodged through injury and a rather average start to the season in the league, his career is experiencing its first real slack. But Kylian Mbappé speaks in L’Equipe and empties his bag. He admits having wanted to leave for Real, slips a tackle on Noël Le Graët, from whom he would have liked more frank support after the Euro, admits having thought of withdrawing from the Blues in a very free speech. On the pitch, he responds with the same force by knocking out Belgium, with a redemptive penalty, and by offering two recitals, in duet with Karim Benzema, in the half and in the final. No one will talk about his goalless Euro anymore…

• February 2022 – PSG – Real Madrid: While all the press is already sending him to Madrid four months later, Mbappé faces Real in the knockout stages of the Champions League. The pressure is gigantic around the one who polarizes all the attention. He rocked the first leg with a brilliant gesture in stoppage time. He conditioned Bernabeu on the return of a new magic trick. PSG will not follow his pace but Mbappé still proves how tight he is to everything that is said or written about him. He even seems to feed on it to guzzle and grow the monster he created.

This week, the episode is a little less spectacular but it sums up the character well. “Being criticized, it won’t change my way of playing, my way of living“, he judged Thursday in the corridors of the Stade de France. This is undoubtedly what distinguishes Mbappé from ordinary mortals.