More under the spotlight than ever, Mbappé has gone to Qatar to dose his hunting hunts, his rations of exuberance.
If something was taken for granted in the semifinal against Morocco, it was the confrontation between the Frenchman and Achraf Hakimi, colleagues at PSG, best friends in Paris, two bullets.
Before going out onto the grass, they greeted each other in the tunnel as if they were in the corner of the neighborhood, with sleight of hand and a sincere hug, while Griezmann walked in circles at the back like in the waiting room of an operating room.
Mbappé and Achraf knew that they were what everyone expected.
Since a long time.
So much so that in May, when some of the PSG footballers were on a publicity visit in Doha, they already fantasized about the possibility of meeting later in the World Cup.
"I will have to destroy him," Mbappé joked.
“I'll have to beat him down,” Achraf replied.
There was none of that.
Not a spark.
Just a little kick with which the forward threw to the side and which he immediately corrected with a caress on the head and a high five.
The first torch of France was lit by that band, but it was lit by the guy who plays behind Mbappé's back, Theo Hernández, who was in the field as a result of a family tragedy.
That position was for 10 minutes from his brother, Lucas.
But after that brief stretch of his debut in Qatar, he had to leave the field, and the World Cup.
He went to defend the Australian Leckie, who had been sent a long ball down the left wing that he was defending, misstepped, fell to the ground, and felt the pain for an instant before seeing himself down on the scoreboard.
Australia went 0-1 and Lucas had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, an injury that will also make him miss the remainder of the season with Bayern Munich.
That calamity led to Theo entering the field, who a quarter of an hour later began to straighten the scare of the French: he assisted Rabiot, who headed the tie.
The full-back, still scared by his brother, barely came to celebrate, but since then he has played everything with France, something he did not notice when he met Deschamps' first eleven.
In the next game, he also officiated as chimney sweep.
When Denmark had tied them, Theo assisted again, this time to Mbappé.
Against Morocco, he did something that seemed even more extraordinary.
To reach their second consecutive final, France found themselves facing a conundrum that was a fortress.
A team that only had one goal against in their locker, and they had scored it themselves.
Deschamps had suggested that he had found ways to bypass the locks.
All the surveillance went after Mbappé, but they jumped the box following another sequence.
In the Al Bayt stadium-jaima, it was Theo Hernández who arrived last at the corkage party.
It started the usual way: Griezmann reached a good filtered pass from Varane and pushed it back to Mbappé, who gathered a bunch of defenders.
He shot once, and they blocked him, he insisted and the ball bounced off another defender, but it bounced very high at the far post, and Theo appeared, jumping and kicking it almost to the height of his head, with his left foot. , the one that his brother had broken.
"Right now I think of him," said the scorer after the match.
Barely five minutes had elapsed from the appointment and France had already achieved something unique.
And it was not Mbappé, but the guy who guards his back, and who later helped him shake off Moroccan surveillance.
The PSG attacker, as in the quarterfinals against England, began testing the resistance of the walls, surrounding them above all.
The first time he outwitted Achraf was in the second half, and not with a cut, or a feint on the run, but launched by a pass from the Milan side that was a dribble.
He barely ran away anymore.
In the next one, when he was already reaching the point where the area and the end line intersect, Amrabat took out the scythe and mowed him down.
But like the patient hunter he is becoming, he found the moment to dazzle: surrounded by four defenders in the box, he made three cuts and set up newcomer Kolo Muani to reach the final.
When it was all over, they returned to the most anticipated story.
Mbappé looked for Achraf, lying on the grass.
He picked him up, hugged him.
And they both left, each one wearing the other's shirt.
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