“This year I dream of winning everything: the Champions League, the European Championship and the Olympics,” says Kylian Mbappé. Coming from anyone else, these words might sound like a pipe dream. But at 21 years old, Mbappé is already widely recognized as one of the best soccer players in the world.
Mbappé currently plays for Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), although he began his professional career with Monaco. His contract will end in 2022, and the bidding war is already on between Europe’s best teams. In order to keep the young star on their team, PSG has floated the idea of moving him into the same pay bracket as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, offering well over $500,000 per week.
It has already been a remarkable run for the young star who helped lead the French national team to glory at the last World Cup.
Kylian Mbappé Rises Among Stars
Though only 21 years old, Mbappé has made waves in professional soccer for five years already. He debuted with AS Monaco in 2015, where he won the Ligue 1 Young Player of the Year award. He has also won his current team’s Top Scorer and Player of the Year awards for and been recognized as France’s Footballer of the Year.
With such an impressive resumé, Mbappé’s transfer from AS Monaco to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 was worth nearly $200 million. This made him the most expensive teenager transfer in soccer history. He is also the only teenager after the legendary Pelé to score in a World Cup final.
“I grew up with the myth of Zidane, then I loved the great Brazilian players: from Pelé to Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Kakà. Another idol of mine was Cristiano Ronaldo,” recounts Mbappé. Already “the most prolific UEFA Champions League scorer,” according to the UEFA, Mbappé is quickly rising to the level of his idols.
For the Love of the Game
Mbappé was born just six months after France won the 1998 World Cup at the Stade de France arena, just a few miles from his boyhood home in a gritty northeast Paris suburb. Growing up in a mixed-race home in a violence-plagued neighborhood, Mbappé stayed focused on his first love: soccer. By age dix he was already recognized as one of France’s top young prospects.
“Stay calm, stay with your value,” Mbappé’s family told him when he left home as a young teenager to pursue a soccer career. Dedicating himself to a soccer career meant missing out on a normal adolescence. “It’s very hard to leave your family at 14.,” he recalls. “The first year I cried a lot because I was alone. And it was not easy. It’s only for the love of the game that I can do this.”
Sport runs in the Mbappé family. His father, Wilfried Mbappé from Cameroon, is a soccer coach and also his son’s agent. His mother, Fayza Lamari from Algeria, is a former professional handball player. His younger brother Ethan plays for the Paris Saint-Germain youth team.
What’s Next for Kylian Mbappé?
Still two years out from the end of his contract, Mbappé has allegedly already rejected two attempts from FC Barcelona. But other top teams have also made motions towards the young star, including Real Madrid, the team of Mbappé’s idol Ronaldo.
There is also talk of a Liverpool transfer, which Mbappé has spoken positively of. “They win, win, win, they’re like a machine,” he says about the team.
Follow Mbappé in the UEFA Champions League here, and keep up to date with PSG news here.
