FOXBOROUGH, MA – We came into this tournament wanting to discover the natural heir to football’s greatest duopoly, the last knockings of the Ronaldo-Messi axis with a line of great pretenders. Kylian Mbappe is here to say something: I’m already it.
In Foxborough, just as in 2022, Africa’s best team offered resistance in patches but were never close to troubling the world’s best team. Mbappe gave them a second life with a miserably weak penalty, but in this game of cat and mouse only Morocco were ever likely to be souris.
Mbappe has suffered in the club game, at least by the expectations of his grandeur. Paris Saint-Germain improved in his absence and he was held up as a principal cause. At Real Madrid, his lack of defensive actions were proposed as a reason for failure this season.
The low point came with a viral post that concluded that Mbappe ranked 6,043 out of 6,044 players who averaged more defensive contributions last season. It provoked admissions from France’s captain that he needed to work on that side of his game.
Can I just say: I don’t care about the defensive actions. Real Madrid perhaps might, but France shouldn’t. Focusing on what Mbappe does without the ball is like turning over a Van Gogh painting and criticising the structural integrity of the frame. It is joyless and it has been made to look deeply foolish this summer.
