No matter how many controversies you land up in, no matter what happens or how you are projected by the media and the other players,
Success trumps everything. Period.
Take Mbappe’s journey for example. He had the World at his feet at 19 years of age when he was one of the contributors to France winning the World Cup. That was four years ago in 2018 when the World had known anything about coronavirus or lockdowns. The whole world was still watching what was happening in Russia although it did not involve any guns or tanks. Just pure football.
Times have changed, for years have passed since then. And now we are in the middle of another football world cup. According to some reports, Mbappe is expected to earn £547m in wages for his three-year stay at PSG and a further £156m as a signing bonus. He also has a £61m loyalty bonus per year for staying at PSG which will increase by £8m every year he stays at PSG.
He is undoubtedly one of the highest-paid athletes of all time not just in football but across all sports if we may dare say. According to some rumours, to stop him from joining Real Madrid, it just did not take millions of dollars but also a call from the President of France.
He also has a lot of Power allocated to him according to his contract. He can have a say in choosing the Manager or staff, he will be the one taking the penalties won by the team and a host of other clauses which give him a huge amount of power.
But with great power comes great responsibility and a lot of liability and criticism. This year Kylian Mbappe has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. His behaviour and arrogance with players like Messi and Neymar, his issue with Neymar involving the penalty controversy, and issues with coaches and other teammates. He has been criticised by a lot of ex-players and pundits for his arrogance and his selfishness.
But now that the world cup is back. He is silencing his critics and anyone who might dare raise a finger at him with amazing performances in the world cup. He has already scored 5 goals in the ongoing World Cup and we are just into the quarter-finals. He has shown that no matter what happens off-field, he is still a genius player who can do anything with the ball in his field. He is the biggest star in this star-studded French team.
France has missed a lot of key players like Pogba, Benzema, Kante etc in this World Cup due to injuries. France are the defending champions and they certainly look like a team who can defend the title. But all the onus will be on Kylian Mbappe who will be looking to make sure that he wins the World Cup and Golden Boot. If he does so, he might become a name as big as Diego Maradona over the years. How many goals do you think Mbappe will score in the World Cup?
