“Playing with a mask is absolute horror,” says Kylian Mbappé

The captain of the Blues, who has suffered a broken nose since the first match against Austria, is forced to play the rest of the competition, and the match against Belgium, with a mask.

A blue-white-red mask, a black mask, another mask with vents on the forehead… Since his broken nose against Austria, Kylian Mbappé is always looking for the best possible protection. Before the round of 16 against Belgium, Monday July 1, the captain of the Blues returned to this subject at a press conference the day before the match, and assured that “Playing with a mask is an absolute horror”.

“I changed my mask, because each time there were things that went wrong. It’s really complicated because it limits vision. The sweat remains blocked so you have to remove it so that it flowsthe attacker developed. I had the impression on the first days that I saw in 3D, that it was not me who was playing. As soon as I can take it off, I will take it off, but now I have no choice, I can’t play without it.“Kylian Mbappé even revealed that he had tried more masks than the four observed by journalists in training. “But my competition will be like that, because I can only play like that, and that’s not an excuse. So I have to say thank you to the mask”he continued.

The captain of the France team now hopes to no longer take any punches in the nose, facing defenses which sometimes play on physicality. “The moment you play with a broken nose, you become a target. I knew what I was getting into [en ne se faisant pas opérer]. I may be forced to receive blows, it may awaken the pain, but I am ready to do anything so that we go to the quarter-finals. It is already broken, it cannot break more”he smiled.

Without a bad pun related to his broken nose, Kylian Mbappé also declared that the Blues should now show “a better face” than in the group stage. “I think we shouldn’t make excuses, we didn’t have a high-level group stage. But we’re qualified, we have the opportunity to go to the quarter-finals, we no longer have a choice. In the group I don’t sense any particular doubts, there has been an awareness. Not finishing first has woken up a lot of people.”he added.

In the same vein as his captain, Didier Deschamps assured that the knockout matches represented “a new competition within the competition”and that it was not necessary to make “fixation” on the lack of efficiency of his team in the group stage. “At the highest level, to be able to win a match, you have to score. But all the great scorers have experienced that, it can happen, he argued. We will have to increase the cursor because we will still have something solid and of quality in front of us”. In the event of a tight match against the Belgians on Monday, the Blues trained on penalties this week, but the coach’s objective is to ensure “Let’s not go that far”.