At the Parc des Princes,
We would have imagined a different reunion between Kylian Mbappe and the Parc des Princes. Three months after the announcement with great fanfare of his extension to Paris Saint-Germain, concludes with a gluttonous delivery and a hat-trick against Metz, the Parisian number 7 showed a completely different face on Saturday during the Rouge et Bleu outing against Montpellier.
We will pass on his missed penalty (or rather very well saved by Omlin) at the start of the match to arrive directly at the 44th minute and this totally lunar sequence: PSG recovers a ball and goes on a counter-attack, Kylian is off-center on the left side and launches an acceleration as a call for a deep ball to Vitinha, who sees it but prefers a solution to a partner better placed on the right side. And there, instead of following the rise of his team’s ball, Florentino Perez’s worst nightmare stops dead in his tracks, raises his arms towards Vitinha and finally goes back to the halfway line, completely losing interest in the game.
Further on, Hakimi finds himself all alone like a fool, forced to strike on goal when he would surely have preferred to give it full axis to his best friend at PSG, who preferred to make his sausage near the central circle. Let’s be clear, players getting annoyed because they didn’t receive the ball they expected is about as common as a politician lying. But Mbappé’s reaction to this action goes far beyond the temporary bloodshed.
Galtier defuses the beginning of controversy
Questioned at the microphone of Canal + after the meeting, Christophe Galtier put it down to a lack of physical freshness. “It’s anecdotal,” he said. He’s a competitor, he wants to be good, he wants to be good quickly. But a high-level footballer is not on/off, it takes a little time to regain 100% of his athletic abilities. When it is 100%, it will make even more of a difference. These are players who like to score, who want to score, who attack… it’s a bit normal that he is… not disappointed but a bit short physically compared to his partners. Relaunched at a press conference, the new Parisian coach refuted any problem related to off-field.
“No, (this attitude), it is linked to the match, he assures. They are very high level players with personality and character. Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves. Obviously when you are physically short, when you miss sequences or when you want to receive a ball that does not come, you get annoyed. We get annoyed more quickly when we are physically short. The only Parisian to point the tip of his muzzle in the mixed zone, Marco Verratti there is another explanation.
“Kylian is a player who always wants to do well. I think that with the missed penalty, he sulked a little but that’s normal, he’s a great player, he always wants to make a difference. When he misses something, he is disappointed. But then he showed, already with the first goal on which he was decisive [centre contré dans son but par Sacko], then after with his goal. “As clever when it comes to communicating in front of the press as to drive his opponents crazy with the ball at their feet, the Italian closes the case with a smile:” But it’s nice when he’s angry because that means that he is very attached to this team, that he wants to do well, that he wants to make a difference. »
The entourage evokes “personal problems”
After this attitude that we rarely know about him, we necessarily spent the second period scrutinizing the guy. And what did we see? A Mbappé clearly elsewhere, as if withdrawn from the beautiful communion of the team, dragging his feet to go and congratulate Neymar after his double header and not celebrating his, from an outside right, in the XXXth minute. In the first period, the Frenchman had already had two or three gestures of humor for the attention of the Brazilian, as annoyed to see him stay on the ground after two blows received in the guibolles.
Preview on the fly in the bowels of the Parc des Princes, the player clearly did not look like the big days. And if Galtier did not mention the slightest extra-sporting problem, our colleagues from The team reported the player’s “personal issues”. In the week, already, this one had appeared “upset” on the side of the Camp des Loges. We will certainly know more in the days to come (or not), but what is certain is that it was not the Mbappé that we had left with the banana, the evening of his dubbing at the end of last season.
