“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 absolute horror”.

“I changed my mask, because every time there were things that weren’t right. It’s really complicated because it limits vision. The sweat gets stuck so you have to take it off so it flowsdeveloped the attacker. 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 during training. “But my competition will be like this, because I can only play like this, and it’s not an excuse. So I have to say thank you to the mask.”he continued.

The captain of the French team now hopes to no longer take a blow to the nose, facing defenses that 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 have to receive blows, it may bring back the pain, but I am ready to do anything to get us to the quarter-finals. It’s already broken, it can’t break anymore.”he smiled.

Without any pun intended in connection with his broken nose, Kylian Mbappé also said that Les Bleus should now show “a better face” than in the group stage. “I think we shouldn’t give ourselves any excuses, we didn’t make a high-level group stage. But we are qualified, we have the opportunity to go to the quarter-finals, we don’t I no longer have a choice. In the group I don’t feel any particular doubts, there was an awareness of not finishing first, that awakened 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”.