To see Mbappe playing in Ligue One is like Mona Lisa donning the walls of a nouveau riche industrialist’s mansion than in the Louvre Museum.
Under dazzling Parisian skies, Kylian Mbappe celebrated his first match as the official captain of his country with a brace of strikes, an assist to Antoine Griezmann to kill rumours of an alleged feud over the armband, a few flying kisses to the audience in the stands, and a couple of lung-busting snarls at the television cameras. At the end of the game, a 4-0 canter over the Netherlands in the Euro qualifiers, he held his arms aloft, thanking the crowd drowned in a swarm of Le Bleu renditions, and tugged at the rooster-crest embroidered on his gleaming white shirt.
The second goal was a manifestation of his mischief rather than trickery. He rummaged to the edge of the box with the ball, running 40 yards from goal, and coiled his right-foot to shoot. He didn’t and in the wake took out Daley Blind, whose shove cut the air. He veered towards the right, threatened to shoot again, pulling a futile block from Julien Timber, then shifted a yard further towards his right and smashed a furious drive into the bottom corner. The sole purpose of the goal was to ascertain his frightening finishing skills, to nail a statement that when his mind wills, he could make goal-scoring look like a mockery of defenders and goalkeepers.
But the most striking aspect of his masterclass was his sense of fulfilment, his unbridled joy in sprinting and barging through the most diligently-crafted defensive labyrinths. He makes you wonder at his sheer athleticism, his blinding power, and how such power could also produce something as artistic as the dainty square pass to Griezmann for France’s opener. He could strum the delightful notes of violin from an electric guitar tuned to heavy-metal violence.
The match was another testament of Mbappe’s rousing passion whenever he puts on France’s jersey. The prickly crown of leadership does not suffocate, rather it has emboldened him; he was more vocal and involved than ever before, more assertive and authoritative. Perhaps, he always was, for such quotidian virtues are often lost in the virtuosic gifts of his feet. There was joy, a celebration, almost a boastful parading of his immense skills.
The masterclass came at the Stade de France, a 20-minute drive from Parc de Princes, where he turns up almost every week for PSG. He is the face of the PSG project, the club’s future and identity, even though they possess Lionel Messi and Neymar Junior. But the Parc de Princes, 30-odd kilometres from Bondy, where he was born, has never felt like home for Mbappe (or for the assortment of their expensive stars). It has often felt like a museum of expensive jewels, the sparkle almost confined to the museum and not radiating to Europe as the owners desperately wish for. In the past, Mbappe has felt betrayed by the club. Last summer, he wanted to join Real Madrid, his dream club.
Lifting European crowns for Madrid filled his teenaged dreams.In notebooks, he used to draw pictures of himself holding the Cup alongside his heroes Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo. When the teachers asked him about his ambition, he would instantly answer that he wants to play for France and Real Madrid. If only life was a blind reproduction of dreams.
A discontented Mbappe tried to force a move in the last January transfer window. But a combination of transfer fee (300 million pounds), wages (he takes home £547m in gross salary for his three-year contract, earns another £156m from bonus, which will be paid in full across three years regardless of whether he leaves before 2025, and would earn a loyalty bonus of £61m for every season that he remains at the club, and negotiations between his agent and the club ensured that he remained at PSG.
The disgruntlement has not quite reflected in his numbers for the club. In 33 appearances for the club, he has scored 31 goals and logged in eight assists, though the club is out of Europe. Rumours swirled that he would part farewell to PSG if they crashed out early from the Champions League this season. He, though, blunted the rumour. “I don’t think so – if I linked my future to the Champions League, and I don’t want to disrespect the club, I would have gone very far [away]! I am here and I am very happy, and for the moment I’m not thinking about anything other than making PSG happy,” he told the reporters after the match.
Irrespective of whether he stays back to fuel PSG’s agonising pursuit of the Champions League next season, or join Real Madrid or other elites, it’s time he packed his bags from Ligue One to a more competitive environment, that is either England or Spain.
For all the money PSG has invested on developing the players and revving up the infrastructure, they still seem directionless, like a creaky ship full of precious stones wading through a tempest. Even if PSG do improve, the clubs around them might not. French football does have history and pedigree, but less so the clubs these days. Of the 20 players in the squad for the Netherlands game, only six play in France. Mbappe was the lone Ligue-One player in the starting eleven. That perhaps testifies the state of the league, which is now the most prolific exporter of talents to English and Spanish leagues.
Despite Mbappe, Messi, Neymar and other glittering talents, the league is not as devotedly followed as other leagues outside France. Their feats are often watched as highlight reels, and not live, unless they are playing the Champions League. Such outsized talents as the aforementioned trio should not go unwatched.
Messi, at least, has achieved all he could; to a lesser extent so has Neymar. But Mbappe is only 24, his best years should not be wasted in the still-evolving French league. It’s like Mona Lisa donning the walls of a nouveau riche industrialist’s mansion than in the Louvre Museum. Perhaps, the PSG project will eventually materialise, but Mbappe cannot be expending his best years in Paris. He could be part of a project; but not an experiment, even if he could earn more than anywhere else.
His career, as the German legend and pundit Phillip Lahm recently wrote in his column for L’Equipe, “cannot take on another dimension in Paris.” He would eventually plateau, and gradually, amidst glorious mediocrity, his own career would stumble before scaling the peak of footballing immortality.
Cristiano Ronaldo is perhaps the best example. He left Manchester United, a successful and storied club in itself, to Real Madrid so that he could calibrate his game to the next level, shed the skin of another cycle of metamorphosis, and be the torchbearer of greatness in his era. Some ridiculed Ronaldo for his vaulting ambition, but it is that streak that enabled the journey from Ronaldo to CR7. Unless a similar ambition fuels him, Mbappe, someone who could be as great as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo could end up in the league behind them, which would be criminally cruel on someone as gifted as Mbappe is, which he emphasised once again under dazzling Parisian skies on his captain debut.
It won’t be an easy move—would be a long drawn-out multiple-act drama and thriller combined. Only a few clubs might afford him. Besides, he would have to survive pressure from even the French president—Emmanuel Macron personally called him and requested to stay back last year, PSG would shower riches on him again, and there would be legal hurdles in the contract. But it’s time he bade farewell to Paris, somehow or other, for his own organic growth as a footballer.