You see Kylian Mbappé’s disappointment at missing even the World Cup bronze medal, the one that would have given Didier Deschamps “at least one final joy”, and you might think you are looking at a veteran at the end of a journey alongside the coach who has been there with him all the way. The numbers seem to confirm it: 106 appearances, 66 goals for the French national team – an absolute record in the history of Les Bleus. The remarkable thing is that Kylian is not even 28 years old. He became a World Cup winner before turning 20, lifted the Nations League at 23, and by now it is almost impossible to keep track of the trophies he has won at club level. For many – in fact, for almost everyone except the very few players who reach that level – it would already amount to a remarkable career. And yet this could still be only the first half – a Messi or CR7-style projection – of a journey even greater in its consistency and early brilliance. A rare force in modern football, one that has become a reference point for countless young talents.
France had already produced players who defined eras before Mbappé. But at 20, Platini had only just reached the first division with Nancy. Zidane was being relegated to the second tier with Cannes. Henry – perhaps the closest comparison to Kylian, both for the club he emerged from and the path he followed – was winning the league with Monaco, but as a promising young player rather than the leader of a side whose defining names were Sonny Anderson and Victor Ikpeba. If those names no longer immediately come to mind, that is part of the answer too. No one, in other words, had ever been this dominant this early. And today, at the Fanatics Fest in London, even the directors of France’s National Institute of Sport (INSEP) underline how Kylian represents “a constant source of inspiration for all young people of the new generations and those still to come”.
It is no coincidence, then, that after Mbappé – and only after him – France has produced another wave of precocious talents: Doué, Barcola, Zaire-Emery. And, remarkably, the same phenomenon can be seen beyond football. Wembanyama in the NBA, Le Marchand in swimming, the Lebrun brothers as table tennis revelations – all are 24 or younger, and all have already achieved so much. Simply seeing Kylian on the pitch has changed the scale of what young athletes imagine to be possible: the old hesitation around age has weakened. At the same time, coaches themselves have become more willing to trust players earlier, even beyond France: Messi remaining on the bench at the 2006 World Cup remains one of football’s great what-ifs, while Yamal, still only 19, is already a World Cup-winning regular. “Young people need role models they can truly look up to,” explain the experts. “Many of them grew up wanting to imitate Mbappé and thought: ‘Why not me?’ The limits of sporting performance are often psychological. A champion like Kylian has shown them that nothing is impossible.”
Meanwhile, everything around the athlete’s development has evolved. From increasingly personalised physical preparation to attention to mental health from adolescence onwards – essential in dealing with external pressure and the inevitable anxieties of performance. All of this creates an environment built for careers that begin immediately at the highest level. But the figure at the centre of it remains clear: the smiling face of a striker who loves scoring most when an entire country is watching him.