Just nine days before the start of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, the scorer and world champion of Russia 2018 Kylian Mbappé acknowledged that he was about to resign from the French team and leave the country for acts of racism.
“I can’t play when people yell at me ape. I thought about not playing for the French national team again,” Mbappe said.
In 2018, Mbappé with only 19 years was a highly valued player, but he enhanced his fame with the incredible performance he had in the World Cup in Russia. The fame he acquired made them also have all eyes on his participation in Euro 2021, in which he did not have a good performance and missed the defining penalty in the match against Switzerland in the second round, where France was left out, which generated a lot of criticism towards him from the press and fans, some even racist: “I thought, ‘I can’t play for people who think I’m a monkey.’ I’m not going to play anymore. Then I reflected with the people around me and he encouraged me to continue. Surrender was not a good message because I am an example for many people. This is a ‘new’ France, that’s why I didn’t quit. It was a good message for young people to say: ‘We are stronger than all this,'” the striker recalled in an interview with Sports Illustrated magazine. The striker also said that after the rumors of his departure from PSG in the last market of passes, the call of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, contacted him to encourage him to stay: “There were several calls. Macron called me and said: I know you are about to leave and what I want to tell you is that you are very important in France. I don’t want you to leave because you have the possibility to make history here and because everyone loves you,” said the scorer of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Going to Real Madrid would have been the easiest, but I’m French, a son of Paris and winning something with PSG is something very special,” concluded Mbappe.
