When the subject does not pass, Kylian Mbappé finds the need to burst the abscess.
This is the reading of his press conference on Sunday at Clairefontaine where he explained himself on the direct or indirect reproaches he received this week from its president, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, in L'Équipe, or his partner, Olivier Giroud, after France-Bulgaria (3-0).
The world champion says he accepts criticism of his game, his performance, his failures on a field.
But he doesn't like being passed off as what he isn't, according to him.
For several weeks, he has been annoyed with the character that some would try to build: selfish, taking himself for another, caught up at 22 years by the syndrome of the big head.
This feeling, he had already expressed it publicly after Bosnia-France (0-1) at the end of last March.
“Of course that tiresome, especially when you play in a club in your country, that you give everything for your national team, then explained the Bondynois.
It's different for players who play overseas.
They only come back here for the national team.
I am there all the time.
Of course it speaks a lot more.
It's a different context but I knew it when I signed in Paris.
"
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In his viewfinder: TV or radio broadcasts where he remains a tireless subject of debate.
These same programs that the players playing abroad continue to follow, always more eager to know the feelings in their country than the local opinion about them.
So much for the decor.
A misunderstood ambition
This week, he was very surprised that the "attacks" come from within, from his world, that of football.
After playing his role of president who affirms that Mbappé will always be Parisian next season, the president of PSG has abandoned himself to a strange clumsiness, declaring: "If he wants to decide who we recruit or not, that, that is not possible ”, dropped Al-Khelaïfi in response to the sporting demands that the top scorer of the L1 season exposes to extend.
This exit, perhaps to give air to Leonardo, the sporting director, at the time of the transfer window, can make him pass for a difficult player who oversteps his role when he simply asks for a more competitive team to go. even further than a Champions League semi-final. The attacker feels that his ambition is not understood or that it is turning against him. It will take a Euro to erase this little presidential phrase that hit him. This Sunday, it is the only response linked to PSG that he formulated in his press conference, sweeping away other questions about his future.
Olivier Giroud's statement on the L'Equipe Channel has once again fueled its critics who saw it as proof of his supposed bad side, preferring to play with stars than with less talented elements. Mbappé would have preferred that dirty laundry was washed with the family, in the locker room rather than on television. Aware of his place in French society and sport, he also sometimes wonders if some of his partners would not be jealous of his aura while the Parisian remains the darling of the public and the media.