The 2018 World Cup belonged to Kylian Mbappé. He scored four times. He won the official award for the best young player at the tournament. He became the second teenager to score in a World Cup final, putting him in a club of two with Pele.
The narrative pre-tournament was all about Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi, the great duopoly of global football discussion. Mbappé showed us a glimpse of the future.
To watch Mbappé in that tournament was an arresting thing. He had not even started 50 top-flight league games before the tournament began. He was a young player who appeared to have been designed strictly in accordance with the holy trinity of attacking attributes: pace, skill, intelligence.
It wasn’t that Mbappé was taking opponents on and beating them; it was that you never believed they had a chance. He also disarranged the pitch: before, there was 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10 yards from goal; with Mbappé, he got it and then, two seconds later, he was shooting.
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Mbappé was not quite a pure good news story – is anything now?
Indeed it is fair to ask what difference Mbappé has made since that World Cup. He has scored goals (loads). He has won trophies (some). But he has not won Paris Saint-Germain the Champions League and he did not win France the European Championship. After his missed penalty against Switzerland, Mbappé walked alone to the centre circle. It felt as symbolic as the celebration four years ago.
The accusation is that Mbappé has wandered unhelpfully from the path. His output on the pitch has not declined – he has scored exactly 100 goals for PSG since the start of 2020-21 – but his output off the pitch has increased beyond good reason.
To an extent, transfer rumours are an inevitability, although Mbappé has done little to limit them. But the implication that Mbappé required influence in recruitment and decision-making at the club was deemed beyond the pale.
France World Cup squad
Goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris (Spurs), Steve Mandanda (Rennes), Alphonse Areola (West Ham)
Defenders: Lucas Hernandez (Bayern Munich), Theo Hernandez (AC Milan), Axel Disasi (Monaco), Ibrahima Konate (Liverpool), Jules Kounde (Barcelona), Benjamin Pavard (Bayern Munich), William Saliba (Arsenal), Dayot Upamecano (Bayern Munich), Raphael Varane (Manchester United)
Midfielders: Eduardo Camavinga (Real Madrid), Youssouf Fofana (Monaco), Matteo Guendouzi (Marseille), Adrien Rabiot (Juventus), Aurelien Tchouameni (Real Madrid), Jordan Veretout (Marseille)
Forwards: Kingsley Coman (Bayern Munich), Ousmane Dembele (Barcelona), Olivier Giroud (AC Milan), Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid), Kylian Mbappe (PSG), Randal Kolo Muani (Eintracht Frankfurt), Marcus Thuram (Borussia Monchengladbach)
If this all makes you a little sad, why? Do we just see too much now? Johan Cruyff made no secret of his desire for influence at Ajax or Barcelona and was described by former Ajax chairman Tom Harmsen as “a money wolf”.
The lack of mystique is ensured by a constant news cycle and the rise of sporting celebrity culture that arguably has the Parc des Princes as its nucleus. There is a nakedness to PSG’s project that means even their star turns leave you unfulfilled unless they literally win everything. Mbappé has been caught up in that and, worse, may well have embraced it.
Or is it just that Mbappé’s journey since 2018 isn’t sad at all, simply inevitable. It isn’t him that made the mistake, it’s us. We believed in purity because we desperately wanted it to be true and slowly that faith was eroded. We persuaded ourselves, with the feints and the dips and the boyish smile that seemed to see the wonder in that tournament, that Mbappé was just like us, not one of them.
Four years on, what was once unthinkable is now true. Then, Mbappé felt like Fifa’s new golden boy, a marketing dream. Now, he needs this tournament more than it needs him. If there is one on-pitch theme of this tournament, it is the farewell from this stage for many of the modern greats: Messi, Ronaldo, Lewandowski, Modric, Bale, Neuer – Benzema has already gone. Mbappé was the only player in the top seven of this year’s Ballon d’Or to be aged under 30.
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France suddenly have a leadership vacuum after the loss of N’Golo Kanté and Paul Pogba and a goalscoring vacuum without Benzema – it is time to step up. Just like in 2018, the opportunity is palpable.
These are all Mbappé’s hopes, a complex web of personal ambitions and patriotic hunger made more complicated still by Qatar’s influence on his professional career.
For the rest of us, a far simpler wish: give us a flashback, even if only for fleeting moments over the next four weeks, of what made us all believe you were so different.
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