"Should I take my shoes off?" When Zidane and his car impressed young Mbappé

Like many champions before him (Pelé, Pete Sampras, Fernando Alonso, Jack Nicklaus, Maria Sharapova, Kobe Bryant…), some of whom he rubbed shoulders with PSG (Gianluigi Buffon, Edinson Cavani), Kylian Mbappé spoke at length at The Players Tribune , a platform dedicated to athletes who wish to address the public through letters published online. In turn, the world champion therefore took the "pen" to write "to the young Kylians". "To the children of Bondy, To the children of Île-de-France, To the children of the suburbs, I want to tell you a story", begins the PSG striker before evoking, with great anecdotes, his dreams and his indestructible passion for football. Among them, the story of his meeting with Zinedine Zidane in Madrid is worth the detour. The native of Bondy says:

“Just before my 14th birthday, I had an incredible surprise. My father received a call from someone from Real Madrid who invited me to Spain for a training course during the school holidays. It was a shock because they bluntly said to my father, “Zidane would like to see your son.” At that time, Zizou was the sports director of the club. Of course, I was thrilled. I absolutely wanted to go.

"I said to myself in my head, I'm in Zizou's car"

I will never forget the moment we arrived at the training center from the airport. Zidane greeted us in the parking lot near his car and it was a very nice car, of course. We said hello and he offered to drive me to the field for training. He was showing the passenger seat, like, “Go on, go up.” But I liquefied and asked, "Should I take my shoes off?" Ahahaha! I don't know why I said that. But it was Zizou's car! He found it very funny. He replied, “Of course not, come on, come up.” He drove me to the training ground and I said to myself in my head, I'm in Zizou's car. I'm Kylian de Bondy. It is not true. I must still be sleeping on the plane. Sometimes, even when you really experience something, it feels like a dream. ”

Posters by Zidane, Ronaldo and… Neymar

“Some children have posters of superheroes on the walls of their rooms. Ours were covered with footballers. I had so many posters of Zidane and Cristiano. (To be honest, when I was older, I also had posters of Neymar, which he finds very funny but that's another story!) ”, Also tells Kylian Mbappé in his letter to the site Players Tribune .

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