Kylian Mbappé, before a game of the French team. /
Controversy in France
The PSG star reprimands the president of the French Football Federation for stating that “he would not have picked up the phone” from the former Real Madrid player and coach if he had called him to apply for the position of French coach
The waters go down troubled in France. Barely half a month after ‘les bleus’ succumbed to Argentina in the World Cup final in Qatar, Kylian Mbappé has come up with some controversial statements in which the president of the French Football Federation stated that “he would not have taken the phone» to Zinedine Zidane in case the former footballer and coach of Real Madrid had called him to apply for the position of French coach.
“Zidane is France, you can’t disrespect a legend like that,” the PSG star wrote on his Twitter account shortly after Nöel Le Graet proclaimed in an interview with RMC Sport that he didn’t care if Zidane listened to the songs of siren that arrive from Brazil, where the name of Zizou sounds like a replacement for Tite at the head of the ‘Canarinha’ and denied having considered the Marseillais for the position of national coach in the event that Didier Deschamps had not continued in command of the two-time champion of the world.
Le Graet defended that the name of Zidane “was always under the radar.” «He had many followers, some were waiting for Deschamps to leave. But who can seriously criticize Deschamps? Nobody can. You can always fail a game, but I’ve been with him for ten years, there haven’t been many problems. His departure always generates clicks,” said the top French federation leader one day after Deschamps’ continuity at the helm of ‘les bleus’ was confirmed until 2026.
«If Zidane tried to contact me? Of course not, he wouldn’t even have picked up the phone. To tell him to find another club? Make a special program for him to find a club or a national team”, Le Graet continued in an interview that has raised enormous dust in France and has sharpened the division that already existed with Mbappé as a result of other issues such as the advertising commitments that the crack of Bondy has refused to attend on several occasions.
Le Graet admitted in another interview in 2020 that Zidane would be his first choice for the France coaching job if Deschamps left ‘les bleus’, but now, with the Bayonne coach’s renewal already sealed, he denies having even considered the arrival of Zizou, unemployed since his departure from Real Madrid in the summer of 2021 and who has not hidden his desire to lead his country’s team one day.
Le Graet also charges against Benzema
In addition, Le Graet closed ranks again with Deschamps’ decision to separate Benzema from the concentration of the French team in the World Cup in Qatar. “I admire Benzema’s career. Unfortunately he was injured and I’m sorry. I don’t care what people say, the template worked great. If Karim had been there, we wouldn’t have had Giroud and maybe we wouldn’t have scored as many goals,” he said.
The president of the French Football Federation went further, to the point of questioning whether the Lyon player would have been able to recover for the last rounds of the World Cup. “I don’t care what your environment says. Benzema resumed training when the World Cup ended, not before,” said the federation leader, when the truth is that Benzema, after enjoying a few days of vacation on Reunion Island, returned to exercise at Real Madrid’s Ciudad Deportiva last 10 December, the date on which the World Cup was still underway.
