FOXBOROUGH, MA – We came into this tournament wanting to discover the natural heir to football’s greatest duopoly, the last knockings of the Ronaldo-Messi axis with a line of great pretenders. Kylian Mbappe is here to say something: I’m already it.
In Foxborough, just as in 2022, Africa’s best team offered resistance in patches but were never close to troubling the world’s best team. Mbappe gave them a second life with a miserably weak penalty, but in this game of cat and mouse only Morocco were ever likely to be souris.
Mbappe has suffered in the club game, at least by the expectations of his grandeur. Paris Saint-Germain improved in his absence and he was held up as a principal cause. At Real Madrid, his lack of defensive actions were proposed as a reason for failure this season.
The low point came with a viral post that concluded that Mbappe ranked 6,043 out of 6,044 players who averaged more defensive contributions last season. It provoked admissions from France’s captain that he needed to work on that side of his game.
Can I just say: I don’t care about the defensive actions. Real Madrid perhaps might, but France shouldn’t. Focusing on what Mbappe does without the ball is like turning over a Van Gogh painting and criticising the structural integrity of the frame. It is joyless and it has been made to look deeply foolish this summer.
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Mbappe now has 20 World Cup goals. Messi, still here and still scoring, is one clear of him at the top. Messi is the greatest player to have ever lived and scored his 21 goals in 31 matches. Mbappe has played 10 fewer. It is ludicrous.
In fact, you can make a case for Mbappe now being the ultimate World Cup footballer, up there with He has scored almost a third of international goals in the thinnest air of this environment, an astonishing statistic. He has a hat-trick in a final. He is still only 27. Forget Messi and Ronaldo for now; Mbappe could surpass their combined World Cup goals total.
The only flaw was the penalty – another way in which Mbappe personifies the World Cup. Twenty of the 60 penalties this summer have been missed, the highest miss percentage since World Cup statistical records began.
Why are so many players missing penalties?
Against Morocco, Mbappe had the perfect storm. He was facing a goalkeeper who he knows (the amount of research that goalkeepers do now must live in the minds of takers). He was forced to wait for two minutes by VAR, which creates extra pressure. The ball in this tournament seems to veer and move in the air, which may persuade players to keep their kick away from corners.
And he used the dreaded stutter run-up, which has only a 50 per cent success record at the tournament. It invites goalkeepers to dive and then you pick the opposite corner, but the goalkeeper now knows just to wait. By then players must be panicking. Go the right way and the goalkeeper saves the penalty. Lo and behold: a half-and-half success rate.
France will not care, for they march on. All tournament we have been waiting for them to stutter or stumble. Paraguay kicked them from pillar to post, but that appears to be the only way to stop this team and even then they found a way. Senegal troubled them for 30 minutes but lost 3-1. It’s hardly cause for great concern.
It is Mbappe, not Messi, who has become the defining player within this tournament. He has suffered physical treatment from defenders. This week stood up to disgusting racist abuse from Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla when it would have been easier to simply dip his head below the parapet. He has worn the captain’s armband for three years and he is a symbol of a better, united France at a time when far-right politics is engulfing the country.
Mbappe doesn’t display his emotions often; these superstars usually prefer to let the football do the talking. But he has had a long week and a long season. Two minutes after full-time in Gillette Stadium, Mbappe danced up and down and waved his arms in joy. On the big screen above him, his name was read out as this quarter-final’s best player. Never in doubt. Mbappe is owning this summer.
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