Emmanuel Macron is confident France will beat England in Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final. In an interview with a radio station, the president of the Republic declared that he doesn’t ‘really have any doubts about the fact that we’re going to win’. Macron is not known for his lack of self-belief but for once his bravado is justified: France are the reigning world champions, and in Kylian Mbappé they have the best player in the world.
The Parisian is a phenomenon, the scorer of five goals in four games so far at this tournament, and in netting twice in the last 16 win over Poland Mbappé surpassed the great Pele for the number of goals scored in World Cups by a 23-year-old. He scored four in 2018 as he inspired France to the title.
Despite Macron’s attempt to become Mbappé Best Friend Forever, the PSG star seems reluctant to get too close to the president
Macron and Mbappé are old acquaintances. The president said at the start of this World Cup – as some of Europe’s more virtue-signalling countries made a song and dance about Qatar hosting the tournament – that sport and politics are incompatible. But they are when it suits Macron.
At other times sport has provided the president with some useful PR, particularly Mbappé, whom he regards as an ideal role model for the 21st Century Republic. Like Macron, the Paris Saint Germain (PSG) striker burst onto the scene in 2017, making his first appearance for France on March 25, a few weeks before Macron was elected president. That summer Mbappé moved from Monaco – whom he helped win the French league title – to PSG, despite strong interest from Manchester City.
He and Macron are neighbours, the PSG stadium being only four miles from the Élysée Palace, and Mbappé was invited to the lunch in 2018. Also present was the former footballer turned Liberian president, George Weah, and as they ate they discussed how football could boost the African economy.
Despite Macron’s attempt to become Mbappé Best Friend Forever, the PSG star seems reluctant to get too close to the president. In April this year 50 prominent figures from the world of French sport put their names to a declaration calling for people to vote for Macron and not Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election; Mbappé’s name was not on the list, an omission that caused some comment in the media.
Perhaps it was an astute decision on the part of Mbappé. He hails from the suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, the most impoverished department in France, where neither Macron nor Le Pen is popular.
In the first round of the presidential election 49 per cent of the electorate in the area cast their ballot for the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon, dwarfing the 20 per cent who opted for the incumbent; in the parliamentary elections that followed his NUPE coalition crushed Macron’s ruling party.
Had Mbappé endorsed Macron it would not have been looked on favourably. As it is, he is not as popular as some of the other French players.
My ex-wife is a teacher in a state school four miles from Bondy FC, Mbappé’s childhood club. I asked her what her teenage pupils – almost exclusively of African origin – think of Mbappé? They prefer Paul Pogba and Karim Benzema, both of whom missed the World Cup with injury. The pair are controversial figures, often in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. But they’re seen by the kids as rebels, men who cock a snook at the establishment. Mbappé, on the other hand, is seen by the kids as ‘too clean’.
But his squeaky clean image goes down well elsewhere in France. In the second round of April’s presidential election, Mbappe received ten ballots in the village of Doubs in central France, as the 298 voters despaired at the choice of Macron and Le Pen.
The month after the election Mbappé signed a new deal with PSG, one which will reportedly net him £650,000 a week over three years. His parents, who split a couple of years ago, are credited with instilling in their son a fierce work ethic (his father was a youth coach at Bondy FC for many years) and are part of his management team. They play a large role in ensuring their son remains grounded despite being one of the most famous faces on the planet.
In an interview with the New York Times in September, Mbappé described the foundation he has started to help children from the Paris region. Apparently he has been in contact with one of the England players he’ll face on Saturday, Marcus Rashford, to congratulate him on his initiative to provide free school meals to children.
The French media flocked to Mbappé’s home town in 2018 after the World Cup victory, venturing into an area few had ever before been. The journalists’ first stop was Bondy FC, and among those they spoke to was 15-year-old Malik, who praised Mbappé, not just for his part in the World Cup but because he ‘brought the spotlight to our town’.
The then mayor of Bondy, the Socialist Sylvine Thomassin, said: ‘Kylian illustrates the success of a positive state of mind, which youngsters need to expand their world. They have to stop thinking that their future is only in Bondy.’
The mayor also took the opportunity to call for more state subsidies to help the depressed department and its inhabitants. That hasn’t been forthcoming. A report in 2020 revealed that 280,000 people in Seine-Saint-Denis – 17.5 per cent – live below the poverty line, and were mired in despair and hopelessness. Thomassin was ousted as mayor that year and when she attempted a political comeback this year her car was vandalised and obscene graffiti directed at her and Mbappé sprayed on a mural of the player in Bondy.
Lockdown widened the gulf in France between the haves and the have-nots. A year after Covid struck, a journalist from Le Monde visited Bondy and described ‘a spiral of social and human disasters’, particularly for the young, many of whom had dropped out of school during lockdown and never returned.
If Mbappé keeps scoring the goals that take France to a second consecutive title – a feat last achieved by Brazil in 1958 and 1962 – the media will likely rush back to Bondy in search of fresh quotes. They’ll find that life hasn’t improved.
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