When Kylian Mbappé was 12 years old, he was invited by Chelsea to do some training with the youth categories of the London club. The beardless Kylian traveled accompanied by his mother, who spent a week with him in the English capital. At the end of it, a ‘blue’ coach replied that they needed more time to gauge the kid’s physical level. His mother immediately replied: «I think we will not return here… If you want to sign him, do it now. In five years you will return and you will have to pay 50 million euros.
The truth is that seven years later, in 2018, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) paid 180 million euros to take over the services of an overwhelming young man, called to be the best footballer in the world in the era after the duel Messi- Ronaldo. The London anecdote, published by ‘The Athletic’, accurately describes the personality of Fayza Lamari (Paris, 1974), former professional handball player, known today for being the representative of Real Madrid’s most desired soccer player, protective mother with a reputation as a relentless negotiator who came to irritate Florentino Pérez himself with her demands during the frustrated operation of 2022 A year later, Lamari is once again at the center of the Mbappé soap opera while the Madrid fans get tired of the rudeness of the long-awaited player in a three-way chess game that continues to fill the newspapers with unfulfilled headlines.
Parisian of Algerian-Berber origins (Kabylia region), Muslim and lawyer by training, Lamari gave his youth to handball professional during the 1990s: specifically, as a right winger for Bondy of the French First Division. She left her mark on the club – where she would continue to be employed after retiring from active sports – due to his fighting character. She married her longtime boyfriend, Wilfried Mbappé, a former soccer player and coach of Cameroonian origin, and the couple had three children: Kylian, Ethan and Jires Kembo, adopted by the couple when they had not yet had their own offspring. (Today the spouses live separately). After giving up handball and focusing on raising his children, Lamari became a public figure when he began closely managing the career of the world’s most sought-after player. “We have the same tastes. He even buys my clothes,” Kylian Mbappé declared at the 2018 World Cup: “I tell him everything… Even about my girlfriends. She knows everything. She is my confident “.
After exposing himself last year on social networks during the mess of the ‘no signing’ of the French star by Real Madrid, Lamari has opted this season for a more discreet profile: he meets with the executives of PSG and the Spanish club, but he no longer intervenes in the public debate or denies exclusives on Twitter. However, his movements continue to generate controversy and noise. The last one has been his decision to found a soccer agency in which, in addition to representing his son, he wants to attract, for example, his friend Achraf Hakimi, a Moroccan international and Kylian’s teammate at PSG.
The news (published by L’Équipe) has not been well received by many agents, a union very upset by the recent restrictive regulations of la FIFA in pursuit of a definitive professionalization of the sector. (Achraf’s own agent, Alejandro Camaño, believes that “being the mother of a player is not enough to be an agent, it seems to me a lack of respect for the profession”).
A brake for your child
The French Yvan Le Mee, representative among others of Real Madrid winger Ferland Mendy, stated this week on a radio program that “being an agent is not the job of Mbappé’s mother. She does not have the ability to act. There is a reality, you have to do what you know how to do. I would like to start a restaurant, but I don’t know how to cook; then I don’t.”
According to Le Mée, Mbappé would already wear white if it weren’t for his mother: “I am convinced that if Kylian Mbappe Had he had an agent at the time of the negotiations with Real Madrid two years ago, he would already be there. When you don’t have the habits and customs, when you talk to a manager of a historic club like someone you’ve known for a long time, maybe it doesn’t work. They don’t know how to handle the situation to get there. The player is still in Paris, and he obviously doesn’t seem happy. […] To make trades for your child and other players, [Lamari] should have a license. […] The one who has the license negotiates, makes the transfers and intervenes in the market; and whoever does not have it should not be able to negotiate. Others are collaborators and do administrative tasks; And I don’t think she’s the one who puts the stamps in the office for Kylian,” Mendy’s agent concluded without mincing words.
Lamari’s new company It is called KEJWF (name made up of the initials of the family names) and it also manages the career of Kylian’s brother, Ethan, a player in the lower categories of PSG. According to the French press, the new non-family client of the new company will be the promising French midfielder of Algerian origin Ryan Cherki, 19 years old, currently at Olympique de Lyon. The new ‘Iron Lady’ of soccer, as some digital media call her, sits with some of the most powerful and wealthy businessmen and sheikhs on the planet. The matters that she does not control of her, she consults with her trusted lawyer, Delphine Verheyden, a specialist in sports law whose role is growing (as ABC has learned) in the clan’s business.
“Play strong, don’t tremble”
Kilyan Mbappe’s mother she detected the potential of her eldest son before anyone else and today she manages his image and his money, to the point of being considered in the French media as an obstacle to the eventual marriage of a star without a known partner.
An executive who has met with her and her lawyer once paints her as a person “much more intelligent than she may appear at first glance, and very strong. She plays strong and doesn’t tremble, she knows how to shut up… I don’t know any woman who has so much power and character today in today’s European football. She left us absolutely amazed ».
Mbappé with his mother, Fayza Lamari
Last year, Fayza Lamari danced naturally for several months between two giants like Florentino Perez and Nasser Al-Khelaifi. In the end, whether or not there was a call from Emmanuel Macron to convince Kylian to stay in Paris, the result was undeniable: the mother got a contract of 40 million a year for her son. Those words of the then president of his usual club, Bondy (on the northeastern outskirts of Paris), during an interview with ‘Le Parisien’ in 2017, make more and more sense: «Fayza was an emblematic figure of the Bondy handball club », Jean-Louis Kimmoun explained then: «She grew up right in front of our pavilion and many of her brothers played in our club. She was a fighter on the track, and sometimes things got pretty ugly when she was up against her rivals. Many of them remember having played against Fayza.
2023-07-02 02:05:48
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