First came Thierry Henry. Then Zin\u00e9dine Zidane. Now, it\u2019s Kylian Mbappe\u2019s turn to be France\u2019s top soccer player. Now, I don\u2019t normally talk about soccer. But, when I see someone who has that same star quality of Mbappe, it just has to be recognized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 Lottin was welcomed into the world on December 20th, 1998, just a few months after their World Cup win. His mom, Fayza Lamari, had a successful career in handball. His dad, Wilfried Mbapp\u00e9, was a coach and is now Mbapp\u00e9’s agent. Kylian grew up about 20 minutes away from Paris (if you were driving) in Bondy. When he was able to start playing soccer, he quickly became one of the top child prodigies. His father was a coach at AS Bondy, where Mbapp\u00e9 would start gaining his fame. After that, he moved on to Clairefontaine Academy so he could gain even more attention from big name clubs. Other famous players like former Juventus star Blaise Matuidi and Chelsea\u2019s Olivier Giroud also used Clairefontaine as a stepping stone for singing to top flight teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was offered by many French and non-French teams. In the end though, he decided to sign a three year contract with AS Monaco in July of 2013. Mind you, he was just 14 years old when he signed on the dotted line. If that doesn\u2019t give you any perspective on just how good Mbappe is, I don\u2019t know what does. He made his debut with the club on December 2nd, 2015 against Caen. When he subbed in for Fabio Coentr\u00e3o, he became the youngest player in AS Monaco history in a few decades. Oh, and by the way, he broke another record, becoming the youngest goal-scorer at Monaco at 17 years and 62 days. He scored a beauty on his left foot and past the keeper in a 3-1 win over ESTAC Troyes. After those games, he never looked back. In his 3 seasons with Monaco, he had 16 goals and 8 assists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, a French powerhouse came knocking, Paris Saint-Germain. They have won 7 league trophies in the past 8 seasons and have won each of the last 6 Troph\u00e9e des Champions Cups. When PSG offered him a four-year contract worth over $200,000,000, it was an offer he just could not refuse. Now, you would think that it would be really hard for Mbapp\u00e9 to fit into a starting 11 filled with big-name players including winger Neymar, striker Mauro Icardi and goalkeeper Kaylor Navas. Furthermore, your home stadium is 22 minutes away from where you grew up. Those two factors could lead to a lot of stress. In the end, that wasn\u2019t the case at all for Kylian. Throughout his four year career with PSG so far, he has 82 goals and 27 assists. I think it\u2019s safe to say he\u2019s really made his mark with the club, but what about the country?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since he got called up to the French national team in 2017, he\u2019s been a mainstay in a potent starting 11 filled with starpower. These include Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, Chelsea midfielder N\u2019Golo Kante, Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba and Barcelona forward Antonie Griezmann. In particular, the 2018 World Cup was really where he showed out. He scored 4 goals in 7 matches, including a brace against Argentina in the Round of 16 and a goal in the World Cup final. With that goal, he became the 2nd youngest goal scorer in a World Cup final. And guess who\u2019s the 1st, the legendary Pele. Think about that for a second. Kylian Mbappe shares the record books with Thierry Henry and the aforementioned Pele. Those two players are some of the greatest to ever step foot on a football pitch. If you share the record books with those types of players, you should be recognized in some form. Yes, there are the Ronaldo\u2019s and Messi\u2019s of the world as well, but Mbapp\u00e9 is right there with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the next time you see Mbapp\u00e9 on the pitch, think about his story and how hard he worked to get where he\u2019s at. The one thing that I want you to take away from his story is that don\u2019t be nervous when you\u2019re surrounded by people who are exponentially better than you. You just have to put the pedal to the metal and work just as hard as them to be on their level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First came Thierry Henry. Then Zin\u00e9dine Zidane. Now, it\u2019s Kylian Mbappe\u2019s turn to be France\u2019s top soccer player. Now, I don\u2019t normally talk about soccer. But, when I see someone who has that same star quality of Mbappe, it just has to be recognized. Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 Lottin was welcomed into the world on December 20th, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-soccer","category-sports","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}