Kylian Mbappe has already won a World Cup; now comes his hardest challenge

Which is exactly the moment Kylian Mbappe decided to step up and show the world exactly what he could do. Now a quick, very quick, look back through the history books and you could attribute this to Mbappe’s performance for Monaco in the Champions League against either Borussia Dortmund or Manchester City. Or you could attribute it to his performance for France at the FIFA World Cup and yes, both the Round of 16 or the Final, although the Round of 16 was more career making.

Not someone who was just there for the ride along or someone who could someday say, “I was a part of that French team that won the 2018 World Cup”.  No, Kylian Mbappe was Didier Deschamps’ superstar in a team overly laden with superstars from top to bottom. Go ahead, open Google and take a quick look at the line-up that started the 2018 final at the Luzhniki. Scan through it and tell me they aren’t, or weren’t at that point of time, some of the very best players in their positions.

Because a midfield pivot of N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba are what dreams are made up off. Combine that with Samuel Umtiti, before injuries struck him down, and Raphael Varane, still only 24 and one of the best already, alongside Antoine Griezmann and Blaise Matuidi -

it’s a world class team. And that’s with Nabil Fekir, Thomas Lemar, Benjamin Mendy, Ousamane Dembele and a million others on the bench. And yet, the star of the show had to be Kylian Mbappe and he did more than prove it. 

Even four years after that World Cup win, Mbappe still hasn’t achieved enough for the world to consider him as a part of that elite group of footballers. Someone, who a manager could throw on the field and know in an instant, that the game has automatically changed just because of his sheer presence. That is partly because he plays for the best team, by some distance, in a league that not too many people watch. And when they do watch PSG and Mbappe play, aka in the Champions League, the Frenchman has struggled.

That game against Istanbul Basaksehir, PSG’s final group stage game, was the first time Mbappe had scored in the Champions League ending a 9 game drought. Then came that Barcelona performance and once again, it felt like the changing of the guard at the very top of football’s elite table. Here was a PSG side coached by one of the best managers in the game, tearing into a Barcelona side that doesn’t really bear any signs to a team that once ruled Europe with an iron fist.

But more poignantly, it marked the end, on a club level, for Lionel Messi who couldn’t drag his side out from the quagmire almost singlehandedly. That kind of performance seems far away from the Argentine and while he could prove us all wrong in the second leg, that’s a problem for a different time. Because Messi, and Barcelona, were humbled by yet another team although in this case while the team thrived, it allowed Mbappe to thrive and not the other way around.

That is the modern superstar because you see, together alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi has changed the way football sees an individual. They’ve forced teams to create weird solutions and from that weird solution, a young French superstar popped up and became the first teenager since Pele himself to lift a World Cup. The piece de resistance of a player’s career and here this kid won it before many are even allowed to walk across a football field.

Yet, it’s the hardest challenges in this world that tend to give a human being the drive and purpose that their lives need. Not the easy ones but the hard ones and yet, having already lifted the hardest one possible, Mbappe’s challenge is to now one by one, collect the easy ones. Doing that takes a drive and passion for the game that few have, that even fewer are born with and it’s not something that can be taught.

It calls for the right moves at the right time, the right deals, signing the right contract and yet as Mbappe’s past shows, he is driven beyond most. The sheer fact that he created a plan as a young kid still at Monaco, and then proceeded to stick to the plan is simply incredible. Because it’s rare when you see teenagers, forget footballers, create a plan, follow it and stick to it despite everything. Let alone when the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona are chasing after you with unbridled sums of money.

So whether his future is at PSG, leading them to Champions League glory and etching his name in the history books; so be it. Or whether it’s away from PSG, doing things at Manchester City, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich or the billions of other clubs interested, then so be it as well. The only thing that really matters is that Kylian Mbappe does justice to his talent. Not for the fans, or to try and replicate what the generation led by that dynamic duo did but for himself and only himself.

Which is a rather long way of saying, Mbappe has help and lots of it, with the teenagers built to thrive in the modern era, now slowly walking out of the bushes. From Ansu Fati, Pedri, Frenkie de Jong, Vinicius Junior in Spain, to Fede Chiesa, Dejan Kulusevski, Sandro Tonali, Nicolo Barella in Italy, to Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Mason Greenwood, Marcus Rashford in England to Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham and Jamal Musiala in Germany.

He most definitely has help and may even have a rival in Erling Haaland. But even then, make no mistake, Kylian Mbappe Lottin is their supreme leader although something tells me, that Norwegian kid will have a lot to say about that.