The fire spread.
In three years, a world champion title, which propelled him to fourth place in the France Football Ballon d'Or ranking,
in the hope of a coronation as European champion on July 11, 2021, Kylian Mbappé is already no longer the same.
He has become one of the most searched names on search engines, a French icon as the weekly L'Obs headlined on June 3, with an outgrowth of American notoriety - a continent of sporting fascination for him (including the social commitments of local stars, especially the NBA) - while remaining anchored here.
Each time he has been in political difficulty during the pandemic, the Head of State Emmanuel Macron will have used his positive image, from a competition of anecdotes at the Elysee Palace to a visit to Clairefontaine, with an insistence that he publicize his first vaccine dose, which he will gladly do.
To return to the sportsman, a Euro won a season where he once again finished best player and scorer in Ligue 1 and where he gave the impression to the whole world that PSG had reached the semi-final of the Champions League thanks to him after his performances in Barcelona (treble) and Munich (double), would open the doors to the first place of the Ballon d'Or.
The highest step is his intimate obsession, his quest, known to all.
PODCAST.
The night the star Mbappé eclipsed Messi
She makes his contemptors say that he sometimes places his personal project before the collective drawing, and this is a bit what emerged from the little controversy of the week launched by Olivier Giroud and these balloons that would not happen.
Because yes, now, Kylian Mbappé has detractors, a novelty in his decor.
In Russia, he was 19 and a half years old and fans by the millions including Pelé, the legend.
It is undoubtedly the ransom of some of his sulks, of sometimes missed matches but also of the fantasies that he arouses and that some like to tackle him by imagining the life of a young man of 22 years and a half-multimillionaire, endlessly magnetic.
A physical transformation
A life that no one has but that everyone judges. If Macron allows himself to reap the benefits of his media aura, it is because the President of the Republic sometimes invites him to dinner at the Palace during the private hours of his Republican agenda. In real life, he also befriended the actor Jamel Debbouze, reinforced during a common confinement, that of spring 2020, spent in the South of France with the respective families. They are 23 years apart but have the same outlook on existence, the same sensitivity and then age, Mbappé does not like that or only to see the mark of time.
Three years is the story of a mutant body, from the end of adolescence to the transformations of an adult.
The world champion has gained muscle thickness, changing his wardrobe from M to L. He still runs as fast as he moves a larger shell.
He was 1m78 in 2018, he culminates at 1m83 now and his growth is not complete, in all likelihood.
Let's say he is also getting physically closer to the stars every day.
Real Madrid in a corner of the head and the heart
In three years, he was announced everywhere and he wanted at least once to leave Paris, in 2019, when he declared during the UNFP trophy ceremony that he would like more responsibilities, "at PSG or elsewhere", the kind of exit that creates an earthquake on the scale of the feverishness of Parisian leaders, for the moment unable to prolong it.
Here too, everything has changed.
He came to complete a project, embodied by Neymar.
He doubled the initial idea, as his personal progress and the Brazilian's setbacks.
In the polls, the French would like him to stay and the number 10 of the Seleção to go.
Read alsoEuro 2021: tensions with Giroud, PSG transfer window ... Mbappé puts things right
It was Ney who extended, not Bondy's crack for the moment. He would undoubtedly have chosen England and Liverpool two years ago while Jürgen Klopp, the manager of the Reds, remains a diligent but discreet courtier. José Mourinho, he does this in broad daylight but there is little chance that the striker will soon find himself in a club led by the Portuguese with defensive manners.
Everyone knows their dream and it is the only thing in its place during this period of reversal between the two international competitions. Real Madrid remains there, posed in a corner of his head and his heart, the promise of a child, eternal envy. By Spanish-speaking domination of the PSG locker room and undoubtedly personal need, Mbappé has also taken Spanish lessons since 2018. He already understands everything. Kylian Mbappé is a man who is always improving.