Kylian Mbappe spoke to L’Equipe in an interview recently, where he was asked about how people ‘forget about’ his goalscoring and focus on his lack of defense and pressing. He replied: “I don’t think it’s normal, but that’s the life of someone who’s been close to excellence for years. I’m no longer new in this game. Everyone has known for years what I can do. And I think that’s where the human element comes in. It’s human to always look at what someone isn’t doing. When someone has been doing it for ten
years, we stop looking at what they’re doing. We know they can do it. So we always try to look at what they aren’t doing. From that point on, it’s not something I take personally.”
Mbappe on criticism
“I think I have a healthy relationship with criticism. Because there’s constructive criticism and then there’s the kind that’s a bit more foolish. It’s not something that scares me when I have to make a decision. I don’t tell myself I’m going to be criticised. If I know that, for me, it’s the right decision, or that it might not be the right one but it’s necessary, I think my past actions have proven it: I go straight ahead and do it.”
Mbappe on his goals ‘hurting the team’
“That makes no sense. Because if I don’t score, people will tell me why didn’t you score. Besides, I’ve learned that when you’re a footballer, in every match you play, there are millions of coaches. And not all coaches are happy at home. Everyone has their own opinion, but I think the goal of football is to score goals, to score one more than the opponent. A player who scores goals will never be a problem for a team, because I’ve never seen a team win a title without scoring any goals.”
Mbappe on the dictator memes
“There’s one that’s funny because you can tell for some people it’s just harmless fun. There’s another part that’s a little less funny because we know the damage these kinds of people have caused throughout history. To be compared to murderers, or who have made millions and millions of people miserable. I don’t think I’ve done that in my life. So there’s a mixture of things. On the one hand, I know it’s meant in a light-hearted way and that people don’t mean it to go that far, but sometimes it shows a lack of political and human awareness among people. Ousmane joking about it? He is different. He picked it up from social media. With him, it’s just for laughs.”
