Kylian Mbappé captain, story and review of year I

The story of the year 2023 of the France team is closely linked to that of Kylian Mbappé, inducted captain by Didier Deschamps and still just as valuable for the Blues.

Leaders also have the right to rest… but not when the troops are doing badly. Against Greece on Tuesday (2-2), Kylian Mbappé did not start and logic dictated that he be left on the bench three days before a Ligue 1 match to be played with Paris Saint-Germain. But the striker recovered the armband from Antoine Griezmann’s hands when he entered the game and initiated the French revolt, notably delivering a decisive pass to Youssouf Fofana.

France only got a draw and missed out on a grand slam in qualifying for the Euro. Whatever. Despite this result which closes the year 2023 for the Blues, Mbappé’s first as captain of the France team is undeniably a success. Didier Deschamps’ players easily qualified for the Euro, will be seeded for the draw for the competition on December 2 and will finish the year in second position in the Fifa ranking behind Argentina, after their victory over Brazil, Tuesday.

Before ending in this beautiful way, 2023 had started with doubts in the French clan, even before the first match in March. Hugo Lloris, Steve Mandanda and Raphaël Varane now withdrawn from the selection, Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté too often injured, the blue ship was looking for a new captain. After a discussion in Clairefontaine at the start of the first gathering of the year, Kylian Mbappé was inducted.

We then give a blues to Antoine Griezmann, losing in this strong choice. Some extrapolate to the point of imagining him leaving the selection. But the moods were put aside after two minutes, during the first match of the year, against the Netherlands at the Stade de France (4-0). Mbappé serves Griezmann for a goal. The debate is closed. Double scorer that day, Mbappé went through his first 100 days with a popularity rating at an all-time high.

Communication, the great evolution

This will never go down and the Mbappé attraction delights everyone, even the journalists who follow the Blues. Understand: during his eleven years of captaincy, Hugo Lloris showed up at all the match-day press conferences to faithfully deliver his coach’s speech. Mbappé in this exercise is a completely different music, more unpredictable and sometimes dissonant.

Everyone chuckles in the auditorium of the Aviva Stadium, Dublin in March, when Mbappé refers to Michel Platini as “the next target to take down” in the ranking of the best scorers in the history of the Blues. The Parisian will eventually overtake Platoche and settle in 3rd place in the said ranking with 46 goals, but will limit his speaking engagements. The palace revolution is underway among the Blues in terms of communication.

On the eve of the match against Gibraltar (14-0), last Friday in Nice, Mbappé appeared before the press for the first time since June: “The last time I came, out of eleven questions, I got nine on PSG, one on the Olympic Games and one on the French team match because I asked it.” His news with PSG is on everyone’s lips and Mbappé will once again be questioned at length about his future at the club. The limits of hyper-exposure…

However, Mbappé wants to share. “I want to leave room for other players so I’m not going to monopolize all the media space“, he says during his first press conference as captain. This is one of the new trends of the Mbappé mandate: faces are multiplying in front of the journalists. Antoine Griezmann, Aurélien Tchouameni, Mike Maignan, Adrien Rabiot are succeeded and their presence in front of the media draws the contours of the new French leadership around Mbappé.

Decisive in almost every match in 2023

Everyone shares the same goal: to win everything, score as many goals as possible and concede as few as possible. Another start to his mandate, that of Maignan in goal, got off to a perfect start with five clean sheets in a row. So, the Blues set themselves the challenge of not conceding any goals during qualifying. Maignan will finally break in the Netherlands (2-1), his replacement Brice Samba in Greece (2-2).

Behind the scenes, Mbappé therefore delegates. On the pitch, he leads the way. This year, the captain was decisive in nine of the 10 matches he played (10 goals and 7 assists), only missing the mark in Ireland (1-0), perhaps the most difficult match for the Parisian and the Blues in 2023. When he remained on the bench in Germany, in September, the Blues suffered their only defeat of the year (1-2). With its hat-trick of goals and assists on Friday, France achieved the greatest success in its history (14-0).

A winner on the field, Mbappé is also a winner off it. In September, Philippe Diallo came to dinner at Clairefontaine to announce the signing of a new agreement on the image rights of French players, requested for a long time by the captain. With Deschamps, communication is fluid, as the coach assures: “The relationship is very good between the two of us and it is very good for the collective. He has this responsibility to engage the entire group and it does not weigh on him. He takes pleasure in it.“

Deschamps congratulates himself “to see the French team achieve such performances“, of “the excellent transition which allowed us to qualify without any worries”and of “competitive spirit” of his group in 2023. Year 2 of Mbappé’s mandate will be even more anticipated, with a much more difficult challenge: winning Euro 2024.