In a Wild Finish, Tunisia Goes Out With a Win Against France
Australia defeated Denmark, 1-0, to grab the second qualification spot in the group alongside the already-qualified France. Australia needed that win: had Denmark equalized, Tunisia, which upset France, 1-0, would have advanced. Had Denmark scored twice and won, it would have advanced. You can see the round of 16 bracket here.
France had a late goal overturned, giving the victory to Tunisia in a dramatic finish to their group stage game.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters
As World Cup drama goes, it was a remarkable couple of minutes. A last stand by Tunisia. A late goal by France. A lead lost. A result overturned. And then a video review, and it all flipped back in a moment.
And none of it mattered.
Tunisia went out of the World Cup on Wednesday in the strangest of circumstances: victors over France, 1-0, when a late French equalizer was disallowed 12 minutes into second-half injury time, but already eliminated a few minutes earlier by Australia’s 1-0 victory against Denmark.
The results of those two games, played out simultaneously in stadiums only six miles apart, settled the standings in Group D: France (6 points) edged out Australia (6) on goal difference, and left Tunisia (4) and Denmark (1) packing their bags.
Australia’s moment was a rare soccer success for its men’s team: The first time it has advanced to the knockout round since 2006, which was the only previous time it survived the group stage.
Its goal came in a blur: Breaking out after a Denmark attack fizzled, Mathew Leckie took a pass near the center circle, swept around a Danish defender and sent a low shot past Denmark’s diving goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel.
Denmark sent on one attacking option after another to chase the goals it needed to secure its way out of the group, but none of them worked. The World Cup will be remembered as a major failure for the Danes, who reached the semifinals in the 2020 European Championship but managed only a single point — from a dreary scoreless draw — through three games in Qatar.
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The World Cup will be remembered as a major failure for Denmark.Credit...Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tunisia, meanwhile, had briefly thought it had punched its ticket to the second round on Wahbi Khazri’s slaloming goal in the 58th minute. But before its fans had finished celebrating, Leckie scored for Australia, and only a goal by the Danes could save the Tunisians. It never came.
Tunisia’s exit was confirmed when Australia’s game went final, and its disappointment was doubled minutes later when an Antoine Griezmann goal appeared to rob it of even the consolation prize of a final victory.
But after a pause and a video review, Griezmann’s goal was disallowed because he had been offside in the buildup. Suddenly the Tunisians’ lead had been restored. Their fans, crushed moments earlier by the news of their team’s World Cup exit, burst into cheers at the news that they would at least go out a winner.
It wasn’t what any of them would have wanted. But after a five-minute emotional journey in which they had been eliminated, robbed of a win and then handed it back, that prize felt like a moral victory.Show more
Nov. 30, 2022, 12:02 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ +13 FINAL: Tunisia 1, France 0. The score changes but the story of the day does not: France wins the group, and Tunisia heads home.
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Credit...Elsa/Getty Images
Nov. 30, 2022, 12:01 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 12 NO GOAL! Tunisia will win, 1-0. And what a strange sight it is as the referee walks back on after looking at the review monitor. The fans roar in approval, their disappointment salved, just for a moment, at the prospect of a moral victory against France.
They will go home both disappointed and happy, and when you know you’re out of the World Cup, maybe that’s enough.
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Credit...Tolga Bozoglu/EPA, via Shutterstock
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Nov. 30, 2022, 12:00 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
Wait a second: They will look at the Griezmann goal on V.A.R. A quick replay seems to show he was offside in the buildup to the goal. It won’t change anything: Tunisia is still out because of the Australians’ win. All it will have now is the chance for a Tunisian victory.
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Credit...Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:57 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 8 GOAL! Now Tunisia won’t even get the moral victory: Griezmann scores to let France steal a draw. The defending champions will win the group, and the Tunisians will be left with the sting of two crushing bits of news within two minutes.
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Credit...Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:56 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 5 France tries another free kick that comes to nothing, but the Tunisian fans don’t see it: They’re all staring at their phones, hoping to see a Denmark goal come up and save them.
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Credit...Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Australia 1, Denmark 0
Australia Advances
Final: Australia defeats Denmark, 1-0, and advances to the knockout round of the World Cup for the second time in its history! Mathew Ryan, who keeps goal for F.C.K. in Denmark, with the shutout. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:43 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
82′ Slimane is off for Tunisia, replaced by Ali Abdi. But he goes off unusually slow, suggesting that his team — or at least Slimane unilaterally — has decided to lock down this win and hope the other game delivers better news.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:44 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
That is risky, however; France has been better since the subs, and if it gets a goal Tunisia will have to frantically race for a second goal. Every second will count then.
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Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:40 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
80′ France, unsurprisingly, looks much more dangerous with its best players now in the game running at a tiring Tunisia. But it will win the group with these scores, so its push is mainly a point of professional pride.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:37 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
75′ Griezmann is on for France now as well. A French goal would of course be devastating for Tunisia. But its bigger problem at the moment is that it needs Denmark to score in order to advance.
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Credit...Mohamed Messara/EPA, via Shutterstock
Australia 1, Denmark 0
Time Running Out for Danes
75' Denmark seems stunned by the Australia goal and is struggling to get its attack going again. A fairly open header in the box by Andreas Cornelius goes comically wide. Denmark must score twice now to have a chance to advance, and with time running out, that is a daunting task. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
63′ France has decided to fight: Mbappé and Rabiot come on to try to press the attack, and William Saliba, the young Arsenal defender, swaps in for Varane at the back.
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Nov. 30, 2022, 11:22 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
61′ Tunisia would have been through if its lead held and the other game remained tied. But Australia has just gone ahead of Denmark and would finish ahead of Tunisia on points if it wins.
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Credit...Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via Shutterstock
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Credit...Aijaz Rahi/Associated Press
Score Update: Australia 1, Denmark 0
Australia Takes the Lead
61' GOAL! Australia has taken the lead! Mathew Leckie gets a hold of a long ball on a counter attack, beats two defenders with his footwork and drives the ball home! That goal puts Australia tentatively into the next round even though Tunisia has taken a lead in its game. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:20 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
60′ That will be Khazri’s last contribution today: Moments after he scores, he is subbed off. He gets a hero’s welcome on the bench and a full-throated serenade from the fans, but he will watch the rest of this from the bench.
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Credit...Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:15 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
58′ GOAL! Tunisia is finally rewarded and leads, 1-0.
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Nov. 30, 2022, 11:18 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
What a reward for Khazri, who has been one of Tunisia’s most relentless attackers. Ellyes Skhiri started the attack with a strip in midfield, and Khazri was off against a backpedaling France. He beats everyone, cuts around Varane and sends a low, left-footed shot past Mandanda.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:07 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
47′ Khazri went down in a heap there under a challenge from Tchouaméni in the penalty area. The referee had a great look, though. Tunisia wants him to take a second via V.A.R., but he’s not going to do that. Play moves on.
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Credit...Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Australia 0, Denmark 0
Second Half Under Way
46' The second half has kicked off. Denmark will be looking to continue to attack, but finish with a little more authority. While Australia would love to steal a goal, it may be in for three-quarters of an hour of hanging on for dear life.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:03 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
46′ We’re back under way. Deschamps seemed to be discussing his options with an assistant before the second half began, and maybe he will make a couple later. But for now neither team makes any changes.
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Nov. 30, 2022, 11:02 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
That performance will frustrate Tunisia: It has had the better of the play and the chances, and it needs a win to get out of the group. But it will not thrill France, either; the French were mediocre and probably fortunate not to surrender a goal.
That said, France hardly cares: Any result will do, remember, since France is already through as the (likely) group winner. It knows what lies ahead and it has rested its starters: That qualifies as a win, even if it’s a tie.
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:51 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
Halftime: France 0, Tunisia 0 — Tunisia had the better of chances, but couldn’t quite figure out how to stay onside. France’s B-team appears to be still figuring out how to play together.
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Credit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press
Australia 0, Denmark 0
Denmark Dominating, but Can't Score
It's 0-0 at halftime. Denmark thoroughly dominated the half and flirted with scoring several times. Notably, it made 25 trips into the final third of the field, while Australia made 13. Denmark has 45 more minutes to get the victory it needs. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:45 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
43′ After France is quick enough to catch him with its offside trap, Khazri is in again. It hardly matters though: Khazri’s cross was poor, and there was no one there to turn it in anyway.
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Credit...Marko Djurica/Reuters
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:38 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
35′ Wahbi Khazri, who plays in France, rips a shot through a crowd for Tunisia’s latest really good chance. They will be disappointed they’ve not taken the lead in all this.
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Credit...Antonin Thuillier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Australia 0, Denmark 0
Denmark Picks Up the Pace
30' Denmark has clearly seized the initiative and is pressing vigorously for a goal. That makes sense, considering that it is the team that absolutely must win. Some of its crosses and passes have looked mighty dangerous, but no score yet. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:28 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
25′ A great ball by Youssouf Fofana sent in Kingsley Coman, whose finish was as bad as the pass was good. Tunisia’s goalkeeper seemed offended by it, to be honest; he kicked the rebound back into the advertising boards.
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Credit...Martin Meissner/Associated Press
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
22′ A minor spell of possession by France here draws whistles and jeers from the Tunisian fans, who most definitely didn’t come here to watch France pass the ball around.
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Australia 0, Denmark 0
Offenses Asking Questions
15' Both teams are playing attacking soccer, looking for a goal. Despite some good chances, the score remains 0-0. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:10 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
8′ Goal! No. Nader Ghandri finishes smartly with a first-time redirection of a free kick from the left. But the flag goes up immediately — he and a teammate were offside (which may explain why that was quite an easy finish).
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Nov. 30, 2022, 10:09 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
5′ Tunisia is off on the front foot, which should not be surprising since it needs a win here. A bit of aggressive, early pressure while this revamped France lineup sorts itself out might be a gamble worth taking.
Update: Australia vs. Denmark
Advancement on the Line
1' Australia and Denmark have kicked off at Al Janoub Stadium, in Al Wakrah, Qatar. The permutations for advancement are a little complex (see above), but a simplified version is that Australia needs to win or draw, and Denmark needs to win. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
The anthems are done and France and Tunisia shake hands and go back to their corners to await the bell. With Didier Deschamps making seven changes, this game is a good test of the widely held belief that France could enter two teams in the World Cup and have both make the knockouts: Varane, Konaté, Camavinga, Tchouaméni would all start for most of the teams in Qatar.
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Credit...Marko Djurica/Reuters
Nov. 30, 2022, 9:33 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
The lineups are out: Mbappé, Griezmann and Giroud are on the bench.
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Coach Didier Deschamps, right, is resting several of his key players for the match against Tunisia.Credit...Buda Mendes/Getty Images
France is already through to the knockouts, a fact that is clear in the team sent out by its coach, Didier Deschamps. He has made seven changes from the lineup that started France’s last game, a win over Denmark.
Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud, Adrien Rabiot and goalkeeper Hugo Lloris are among those on the bench today, resting for the knockouts.
That presents a weaker (if only slightly; this is France, after all) opponent for Tunisia, which needs to win to have any chance of advancing. But Tunisia has made six changes of its own, so it will have a different look, too.
France’s Lineup
Steve Mandanda; Axel Disasi, Raphael Varane, Ibrahima Konate; Eduardo Camavinga, Youssouf Fofana, Aurelien Tchouameni, Jordan Veretout, Matteo Guendouzi, Kingsley Coman, Randal Kolo Muani
Tunisia’s Lineup
Aymen Dahmen; Wajdi Kechrida, Montassar Talbi, Yassine Meriah, Ali Maaloul, Nader Ghandri, Mohamed Ali Ben Romdhane, Aissa Laidouni, Ellyes Skhiri, Anis Slimane, Wahbi KhazriShow more
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Nov. 30, 2022, 9:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Rory Smith
Olivier Giroud, France’s late bloomer, is still proving his doubters wrong.
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Olivier Giroud celebrating after France’s victory over Denmark in the World Cup.Credit...Stu Forster/Getty Images
Olivier Giroud was never really one of those prospects who caught the eye. Through his teenage years, he was not on the hamster wheel that is reserved for the best and brightest, the kids who everyone is sure are going to make it. He never represented his country at the youth level. The under-16s passed him by. So did the under-17s. And the under-18s.
By the time Giroud was 23, he had established himself as a mildly prolific goal scorer in the French second division, first for Grenoble and then for Tours, small clubs with close horizons. There is no shame in that, of course: You have to be exceptional, after all, merely to be a decent professional athlete. But 23 is not young, not in soccer terms. Giroud’s chance seemed to have passed him by. It had not.
In France’s opening game of this tournament, Giroud scored twice. It took his tally of national team goals to 51 (he has made 116 appearances for his country, a remarkable total given the wealth of talent pressing for inclusion). That was as many as Thierry Henry, the kid who was always going to be a superstar, scored for France. Giroud now needs one more goal — perhaps as soon as Wednesday against Tunisia — to be the most prolific goal scorer in the history of the French national team.
He is 36 now. He left Arsenal, his club for many years, for Chelsea, and then for A.C. Milan. He helped that club end its decade-long wait for an Italian title last season. He may yet end his career as a two-time World Cup winner. It’s not bad, for a late bloomer. It is, in fact, almost enough to make you wonder whether soccer might, sometimes, be a little too quick to judge.Show more
Nov. 30, 2022, 8:54 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Ben Shpigel
Group D belongs to France. Second place is up for grabs.
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France’s team has already advanced to the next round of the World Cup.Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tunisia vs. France
How to watch: 10 a.m. Eastern. Fox, Universo, Peacock (free). Even if France loses to Tunisia, it is more likely that a redwood sprouts at midfield at Education City Stadium than another team captures the group. Les Bleus have already advanced, dismissing in rather emphatic fashion any notion that their unavailable stars would hinder France’s flight into the next round. It’s possible, even probable, that France rests some players. Ten players in the Tunisia squad were born in France, adding extra spice to the game.
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Tunisia players training on Tuesday.Credit...Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Despite failing to score across its first two matches, Tunisia can proceed if it wins — and Denmark draws with Australia. The Tunisians frustrated Denmark into a scoreless tie, and as we’ve seen so far — looking at you, Morocco, Japan and Saudi Arabia — zanier things have already happened.
Denmark vs. Australia
How to watch: 10 a.m. Eastern. FS1, Telemundo, Peacock (free). Denmark is capable of upending any and every team in Qatar. But it has yet to win a match, and now it needs some assistance to avoid a stunning dismissal. First, it must topple Australia; a draw is as useful as a traffic light in the desert. Then, it needs a win or a tie from France.
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Denmark players training on Tuesday.Credit...Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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Australia players training on Tuesday.Credit...Christopher Lee/Getty Images
Considering that its lone goal came on a set piece, on a header by defender Andreas Christensen, Denmark will likely field a more attacking squad or change its shape — or, perhaps, both. Freeing up Christian Eriksen would be optimal.
For Denmark, that is. Not so much for Australia. Although the Socceroos advance with a win or a tie (as long as Tunisia doesn’t beat France), their charge on Wednesday is to play their best match of the competition, summoning their comprehensive defensive effort against Tunisia — not to mention penetrating the Danes’ ferocious back line — and then surpassing it.
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Nov. 29, 2022, 8:55 a.m. ETNov. 29, 2022Nov. 29, 2022, 8:55 a.m. ET
Ben Shpigel
This is why World Cup games will be played at the same time for the next four days.
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West Germany and Austria in the 1982 World Cup in Gijón, Spain.Credit...Popperfoto, via Getty Images
For eight straight days, the soccer smorgasbord that is the World Cup has unspooled at regular intervals, each match staggered to bestow it maximum importance, a full 90 minutes of splendor — plus an eon of stoppage time — on the global stage without intrusion from other games.
Even if upsets abounded, a certain tidiness to the proceedings still reigned: On most of those eight days, there were four games, scheduled three hours apart, one after another after another. It was glorious, satisfying and, for those of us who crave order, rather life-affirming.
Now, as of Tuesday, structure is on a brief hiatus. Dear reader, prepare for chaos.
Starting with the Group A games at 10 a.m. Eastern time, each of the eight clusters across the next four days will stage its final round of matches simultaneously.
France will kick off against the Tunisia on Tuesday at the same time that Australia faces Denmark. After a break, Argentina plays Poland in Group C, which is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. Eastern, precisely when Saudi Arabia’s matchup with Mexico begins.
The change in schedule creates the closest conditions to competitive balance and fair play, assuring that teams do not know the result required to reach the knockout stage before they take the field. It discourages teams from improving pathways in the bracket by influencing results with such tactics as manipulating goal differential or not playing to win. It also inhibits match fixing.
The policy dates to a moment so embarrassing for international soccer — which has had one or two or nine — that it came to merit a shorthand of sorts: the Disgrace of Gijón. Or, in Germany, Nichtangriffspakt von Gijón (the nonaggression pact of Gijón).
At the 1982 World Cup in Spain, heading into their final match in group play, West Germany and Austria realized that a victory for West Germany by one or two goals would enable both teams to progress — and thus eliminate upstart Algeria, which, after finishing group play a day earlier, needed an Austria win or draw to move on.
In the 11th minute, Horst Hrubesch scored for West Germany. Then, torpidity and languor and boredom and yawn. For the rest of the match, George Vecsey wrote in The New York Times, “West Germany made more kicks backward than forward.” The arrangement secured both teams’ passage.
In his book about the rise of African soccer, “Feet of the Chameleon,” Ian Hawkey wrote that Algeria fans waved bank notes at the players, and that German television called it “the most shameful day in the history of our Football Federation.”
Algeria complained to FIFA, but no punishment would be levied. Instead, FIFA responded by amending its rules: Starting with the 1986 World Cup, all final matches in a group would be held concurrently. So, now they are.
Enjoy the mayhem. Embrace the absurdity.Show more
Nov. 22, 2022, 5:42 a.m. ETNov. 22, 2022Nov. 22, 2022, 5:42 a.m. ET
Victor Mather
What is offside? We’ll help you understand.
Video
Novice fans don’t understand it. Longtime fans claim to understand it, but then openly disagree about it. Referees and their assistants are trained to spot it but often have to turn to replays to make sure they’ve got it right.
The actor Ryan Reynolds — who, remember, owns a soccer team — admits he doesn’t understand it but has sought cover by saying, “in fairness, nobody understands the offside rule.”
But now you will as we examine a classic example and some trickier scenarios below.
What Is Offside in Soccer?
Understanding the rule can be tricky. This is your guide.Show more
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Sept. 6, 2022, 2:00 a.m. ETSept. 6, 2022Sept. 6, 2022, 2:00 a.m. ET
Tariq Panja
Kylian Mbappé Is Coming for It All
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Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York Times
Kylian Mbappé will eventually turn up for his interview in an oversized vehicle outfitted with tinted windows, and accompanied by his mother, two P.R. reps, two lawyers, a small documentary crew, a stylist and a friend whose role is, initially, unclear. This is how one of the world’s biggest sports stars travels these days. Kylian Mbappé doesn’t just walk through the door. He arrives.
But not just yet.
First comes a large security man who has politely requested — and this request is clearly not optional — that he be allowed to make a sweep of the spaces his client will visit, to walk the halls Mbappé will walk, to ascertain the most direct escape routes “if I have to get my guy out in a hurry.” The security man will have done the same thing a few nights earlier, at a Manhattan restaurant where Mbappé and his entourage planned to have dinner, and he most likely will do the same later for an event in Times Square for Nike.
Only when the security man is satisfied is a cellphone produced, and a call placed. Only then is the driver told to deliver Kylian Mbappé to the Manhattan headquarters of The New York Times.
This was the summer when Mbappé, one of the most famous athletes in the world, became one of the most valuable, too. It was when a supremely talented soccer star cashed in on a plan for greatness set in motion before he entered his teens, emerging from a tug of war between his sport’s new money, Qatar-backed Paris St.-Germain, and its ultimate aristocrat, Real Madrid, with a contract that reportedly will pay him more than $250 million over the next three years.
The deal has granted Mbappé new power at his club, new resources to finance his expanding business empire and new prominence inside and outside the game. At one point this summer, the fight for his signature grew so intense that the French president Emmanuel Macron intervened to tilt the balance in favor of P.S.G., and the nation.
Over the next few months, Mbappé’s profile is likely to rise further. He is the centerpiece of his star-studded team in Paris, first among equals that include the Brazilian superstar Neymar and the Argentine playmaker Lionel Messi, as it seeks to end its thus far fruitless efforts to win the Champions League. In November, Mbappé will travel to Qatar, where his France squad will try to become the first team since Pelé’s Brazil to retain the World Cup.
But first he has agreed to an interview. He has quite a bit to talk about.
The Start
It was one of those evergreen assignments that schoolteachers give, a prompt to get students to pause and ponder their futures, to explore what they want to be. In May 2014, 15-year-old Kylian Mbappé and his classmates at the academy of the French soccer club A.S. Monaco were asked to design a magazine cover featuring an image of themselves.
An idea quickly formed in Mbappé’s mind. He would not mock up a version of Paris Match or GQ or French Vogue, as some of his friends had, but rather of the newsmagazine Time. As the cover’s visual focus, Mbappé selected an image of himself, seated with his head slightly cocked to one side and his hands clasped beneath his chin. The headline, in a bold white font, declared him “El maestro.” The master. Smaller headlines, tucked into the top corners in block letters, labeled him the best young player in the world, a priority of France’s national team coach, the future of soccer.
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Credit...Courtesy of A.S. Monaco
As a child’s flight of fancy, the mocked-up magazine cover could not have been more prescient. Four years after he submitted the assignment, Mbappé appeared on the front cover of the actual Time magazine. Those headlines proved prophetic, too. By age 19, Mbappé had already led France to the World Cup title, becoming the first teenager since Pelé to score in the final. He was widely regarded as the best young player in the world. He represented, by nearly anyone’s assessment, the future.
“Crazy,” Mbappé, 23, said when he was shown the image of the magazine cover at the start of an interview in June. It is a word he uses often to describe the arc of his life. “Because, you know, when you are 15, you have ambition,” he said. “Every kid has ambition. But when that comes true, after only a few years, it’s something crazy.”
For Mbappé, all the fanfare, all the parts of his traveling circus and all the meetings with fashion brands and book publishers and media moguls are not so much “crazy” but the normal features of his fast-forward life.
Josefina Santos for The New York Times
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It is a life that he has been groomed for since showing the first glimpses of his otherworldly talent in Bondy, part of the network of suburbs on the outskirts of Paris that can lay a claim to being the world’s richest vein of soccer talent. It is why he learned to speak multiple languages while still in his teens, to be prepared for the places he wanted to go. It is why he and his family chose A.S. Monaco, in the French league, to nurture his talents instead of one of the many bigger, richer, more high-profile clubs that were pursuing him.
Yet even in that environment, Mbappé was always a little different from the other prospects in his classes, his teachers said: intelligent and poised, possessed of the type of confidence and maturity that made him stand out. “It seemed to us,” one teacher said after watching Mbappé interviewed on video for a different school project at 16, “like he had been doing this for 10 years.”
The Rise
Long before he was a professional, Mbappé had received admiring glances from well beyond his Paris suburb. When he was 14, he was invited by Real Madrid, his childhood heroes, to join the club for a week of training in Spain. Barred from signing a foreign player so young, Real Madrid still rolled out a red carpet that included glimpses of first-team stars and rides to the training facility in a sports car driven by the France and Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane.
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Mbappé, photographed in June in New York. His off-field pursuits now extend to philanthropy and publishing, fashion and film.Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York Times
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“I want to do great things,” he said. “But in this type of thing I have to learn. I have to learn a lot of things because it’s not like football.”Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York Times
The first momentous decision of his career — signing with Monaco, a team with a rich history of unearthing and fast-tracking gifted young prospects — turned out to be a masterstroke. Mbappé made his debut for the club at 16, played an integral role in its improbable run to the Champions League semifinals two years later, and then joined P.S.G. for the second-highest price ever paid for a soccer player.
Just like Mbappé’s teachers, Unai Emery, the coach who signed the forward when he joined P.S.G., recalled being struck by the player’s sense of self assuredness. Emery and Mbappé had met in Paris before the teenager agreed to return to the capital, and it was in that meeting when Mbappé laid out his demands. They were not about money.
Emery, Mbappé told the Spanish coach, must cast aside the fact that he was only 18 and treat him instead as he would an experienced professional. Emery had to promise that he would not drop Mbappé from the lineup if he had a single poor performance; he must be allowed to play through it and could only be sent to the bench if such performances persisted. Emery agreed, but it hardly mattered: Mbappé, he joked, almost never had a bad game.
What stood out for Emery at the time was the sense that there was an inevitability about Mbappé’s future, that the doubts that sometimes stunted the progress of other gifted youngsters did not seem to be a factor at any point during his development.
“He had made a plan for his career,” Emery said of that conversation in 2017. “‘I’m going to sign five years in P.S.G., and then I’m going to decide the next steps.’”
Everything he wanted, it seemed, was there for the taking. “To be honest, since I’m a young guy, I never had limits in my ambition,” Mbappé said, “because I always say you don’t have to put a limit on yourself.”
That ambition, backed by the credibility of a World Cup championship and the options inherent in the $250 million contract he received from P.S.G. to stay this summer, now extends to building out his significant business and philanthropic endeavors.
Mbappé already has his own foundation, for example, dedicated to inspiring children from the Paris region, and he keeps a close eye on the business interests and charitable efforts of other soccer stars. (He contacted Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford during the pandemic to congratulate Rashford on a campaign that pressured the British government into providing free school meals to children, and he counts the N.B.A. star LeBron James as a role model and confidant on business and charitable matters.)
Mbappé has also been increasingly vocal about efforts — or the lack of them — to fight racism in soccer, so much so that he has publicly chastised the president of the French soccer federation on matters of race and at one point in his interview brushed aside the concerns of his handlers to engage on the topic. Criticism of his play, Mbappé said, is fine. What often accompanies it is not. “You have to talk about it, we have to finish that,” he said of soccer’s persistent inability to root out racism. “Me, I’m ready. I’m ready to help.”
A more concrete project, a production company called Zebra Valley, bears some resemblance in its goals and ambitions to the SpringHill Company, the entertainment business set up by James in 2020. The connection is not an accident: Mbappé credits James with serving as an inspiration and a wise counsel since the stars met at an event hosted by Nike about four years ago.
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Mbappé’s résumé would be the envy of any player: a full professional at 16, a World Cup winner at 19, a national treasure at 23. “I always say I dream about everything,” he said. “I have no limits.”Credit...Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via Shutterstock
To learn more about his newest venture, Mbappé’s mother, Fayza Lamari — who with his father, Wilfried, and a team of lawyers manages Mbappé’s affairs — spent weeks in the United States last year with Kacy Grine, a Parisian financier who is Mbappé’s partner in the Zebra Valley venture. Mbappé missed the trip — he was back in Paris, putting in the performances that would see him crowned the French league’s best player for the third straight season — but monitored each stop by peppering Grine and his mother with searching questions. That same curiosity was raised, independently, by executives at several major companies who work with Mbappé.
After visiting New York, for example, Mbappé traveled to California for meetings at the headquarters of Electronic Arts, the video game maker that picked the young forward to be on the cover of the this year’s final edition of the popular FIFA franchise.
David Jackson, a vice president at EA Sports, was in the meeting. Not many of the athletes he meets, he said, are willing to sit through strategy sessions “and then riff on it with us, pointing out various different elements that he might sharpen and change.” Not many, he said, are as farsighted and considered about the choices they make, eager to talk about their “global positioning” and “the permanence” of their public image today, tomorrow and beyond.
When it came to his production company, Mbappé and his partners eventually settled on a vision that will see Zebra Valley produce films that reach beyond soccer. One of the first projects centers on the life of a Syrian refugee.
To Mbappé, the company is the start of an attempt to create a legacy beyond his sport, a way to be more than “just the guy who shoots the ball and finishes his career and goes to the yacht and takes his money.”
“No, I want to be more than that,” he said. “And sometimes people can think, Yeah, it’s too much, I have to just play football. But I think not. I think the world has changed.”
The Choice
Whatever he does off the field, Mbappé’s status will continue to be defined by his soccer exploits: how he plays and, perhaps just as important, where he plays.
For months this year, it seemed to everyone, Mbappé included, that he would leave Paris for Real Madrid, the club that has had something of a gravitational pull on him since his first visit as a boy. He had told P.S.G. as much last summer, when he ended talks about a new contract, and even EA Sports had planned for his exit this summer; it had prepared the latest version of its record-selling FIFA video game with Mbappé outfitted in Real Madrid’s colors.
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Mbappé and Paris St.-Germain will begin their latest campaign to win the Champions League this week. Both player and club are desperate to finally lift the trophy for the first time.Credit...Rico Brouwer/Soccrates, via Getty Images
P.S.G., though, bankrolled by the state of Qatar, dug in for a fight. It had turned down an offer from Madrid of as much as 200 million euros for Mbappé last year, even though it knew he would be able to walk away for nothing as a free agent this summer.
In June, with Mbappé’s P.S.G. contract expiring, Real Madrid came back again, putting together the biggest contract package in its history. But P.S.G. countered one final time, at one point enlisting the help of President Macron. The vision the president pitched to Mbappé was one about being the standard-bearer for his country, at least for a few more years — of the chance to be a hero for France, and for P.S.G. at the same time.
Macron’s direct intervention in the career planning of a soccer player has perhaps only one precedent. In 1961, with all of Europe’s biggest teams circling, Brazil’s government passed legislation designating Pelé a “national treasure,” a cultural asset of such great importance that he could not be transferred out of the country. While Macron did not go nearly as far in his efforts to keep Mbappé in France, his words did weigh on the striker’s decision to stay.
“I never imagined I’m gonna talk with the president about my future, about my future in my career, so it’s something crazy, really something crazy,” he said. “He told me: ‘I want you to stay. I don’t want you to leave now. You are so important for the country.’”
Macron also spoke of the elephant in the room: the understanding that Mbappé will eventually join Madrid one day, saying, according to Mbappé, “‘you have time to leave, you can stay a little bit more.’”
“Of course,” Mbappé said, “when the president says that to you, that counts.” But the striker did not show his hand. Macron, just like everyone else, would have to wait.
Since he works without an agent, Mbappé said every major — and often minor — decision he takes follows deep conversations with the only two advisers whose opinions truly matter: his parents. His mother, who sat in an adjacent room while Mbappé was interviewed in the presence of a publicist and a lawyer, was a central figure in negotiations with both Real Madrid and P.S.G. over the past year. She declined to answer questions for this article, but her influence is clear.
“We go around the table, and we talk about everything,” said Mbappé, who also credits his lawyer, Delphine Verheyden, as another vital part of his decision-making machinery. But in the end it is Mbappé who takes charge.
Some of the headlines that followed his decision to stay at P.S.G. said Qatar’s money had proved too much to resist — his signing-on bonus of roughly $125 million was the richest single payment to an out-of-contract player in soccer history — but he insisted the vast sums on offer were not what guided his choice. “Because everywhere I go,” he said, “I’m gonna get money. I’m this type of player everywhere I go.”
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Mbappé with his P.S.G. teammates Lionel Messi and Neymar. The Frenchman’s new contract has made him one of the most valuable athletes on earth.Credit...Patrick Hertzog/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Still, Mbappé’s status at P.S.G., and its investment in him, now confers a leadership role that grants him a primacy even among fellow stars like Neymar and Messi. Already, fans and the news media are watching for any hint of ego: frustration after not receiving a pass, a dispute with Neymar over who would take a penalty kick, his coach’s curious public announcement recently that Mbappé would take the team’s penalties in the future.
Mbappé said it was “annoying” to read accusations that he had demanded a say in who would coach him and even who his teammates would be as a condition of re-signing.
“That’s not my job,” he said. “And I don’t want to do this because I’m not good at it. I’m good on the pitch. And outside the pitch, that is not my role. There are so many people that are better than me.”
Yet even though he has decided to stay in France for at least the next three seasons — he hopes to play in the Olympics when Paris hosts the Games in 2024 — the lure of Real Madrid will remain. Mbappé will only be 26 when his latest contract ends, and there remains a sense that the next time Madrid comes calling, not even Qatar’s billions will be able to change his mind.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” Mbappé said, acknowledging that even though he has not played for Real Madrid, the team has orbited his professional career in the most profound way. “You’ve never been there, but it seems like it’s like your house, or something like this.”
For now, he said, he is focused on cementing his status as a national icon in France. He wants to win another World Cup. He wants to finally lift the Champions League trophy with P.S.G. He wants to supplant Messi and Messi’s longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo as world player of the year, and can summon — unprompted — the number of Ballon d’Or trophies each has won, perhaps the best example of how much such accolades mean to him, even as he insists collective honors come first.
“I think I’m about to win it,” Mbappé said of the world player of the year trophy that Messi and Ronaldo have monopolized for more than a decade. He delivers his statement in a tone that is matter of fact, presenting it as a logical extension of his career’s trajectory.
“I always say I dream about everything,” he said. “I have no limits. So of course, like you say, it’s a new generation. And Ronaldo, Messi — you’re gonna stop. We have to find someone else, someone new.”
The Next Step
“The only thing I regret a little bit is to grow up like a man really fast,” Mbappé says as nearly a dozen people wait for him to wrap up his latest work commitment.
For all his descriptions of himself as “a normal guy” who does “normal things,” his life — marked for stardom before he had turned 14, a full professional at 16, a national treasure at 23 — is anything but normal.
“It’s the life I’ve always wanted to have,” he said of the traveling caravans, the emptied restaurants, the bodyguards by his side. “It’s a different life. But like I say, I’m happy. And I’m thankful.”
Yet even a simple interview and photo shoot requires precision planning of the type usually reserved for heads of state or Hollywood royalty. He admits to occasionally wistfully watching others doing simple things, like ambling down the street with an ice cream. On the day of his interview at The Times, he said he would have liked to take the easy stroll to Times Square, two blocks away, and likely quicker to reach on foot.
But as he stares at the door that leads to the street, seemingly unaware of the friend styling the back of his hair with a comb, Mbappé knows that this is not possible.
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Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York Times
Moments later, another call is made, and another giant black SUV pulls up to the curb, ready to ferry Mbappé around the block to another meeting, a Times Square engagement with Nike.
His friend with the comb hops in alongside him. The rest of the entourage sets off on foot.
Show more
Australia defeated Denmark, 1-0, to grab the second qualification spot in the group alongside the already-qualified France. Australia needed that win: had Denmark equalized, Tunisia, which upset France, 1-0, would have advanced. Had Denmark scored twice and won, it would have advanced. You can see the round of 16 bracket here.
France had a late goal overturned, giving the victory to Tunisia in a dramatic finish to their group stage game.Credit...Hannah Mckay/ReutersAs World Cup drama goes, it was a remarkable couple of minutes. A last stand by Tunisia. A late goal by France. A lead lost. A result overturned. And then a video review, and it all flipped back in a moment.
And none of it mattered.
Tunisia went out of the World Cup on Wednesday in the strangest of circumstances: victors over France, 1-0, when a late French equalizer was disallowed 12 minutes into second-half injury time, but already eliminated a few minutes earlier by Australia’s 1-0 victory against Denmark.
The results of those two games, played out simultaneously in stadiums only six miles apart, settled the standings in Group D: France (6 points) edged out Australia (6) on goal difference, and left Tunisia (4) and Denmark (1) packing their bags.
Australia’s moment was a rare soccer success for its men’s team: The first time it has advanced to the knockout round since 2006, which was the only previous time it survived the group stage.
Its goal came in a blur: Breaking out after a Denmark attack fizzled, Mathew Leckie took a pass near the center circle, swept around a Danish defender and sent a low shot past Denmark’s diving goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel.
Denmark sent on one attacking option after another to chase the goals it needed to secure its way out of the group, but none of them worked. The World Cup will be remembered as a major failure for the Danes, who reached the semifinals in the 2020 European Championship but managed only a single point — from a dreary scoreless draw — through three games in Qatar.
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The World Cup will be remembered as a major failure for Denmark.Credit...Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTunisia, meanwhile, had briefly thought it had punched its ticket to the second round on Wahbi Khazri’s slaloming goal in the 58th minute. But before its fans had finished celebrating, Leckie scored for Australia, and only a goal by the Danes could save the Tunisians. It never came.
Tunisia’s exit was confirmed when Australia’s game went final, and its disappointment was doubled minutes later when an Antoine Griezmann goal appeared to rob it of even the consolation prize of a final victory.
But after a pause and a video review, Griezmann’s goal was disallowed because he had been offside in the buildup. Suddenly the Tunisians’ lead had been restored. Their fans, crushed moments earlier by the news of their team’s World Cup exit, burst into cheers at the news that they would at least go out a winner.
It wasn’t what any of them would have wanted. But after a five-minute emotional journey in which they had been eliminated, robbed of a win and then handed it back, that prize felt like a moral victory.Show more
Nov. 30, 2022, 12:02 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ +13 FINAL: Tunisia 1, France 0. The score changes but the story of the day does not: France wins the group, and Tunisia heads home.
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Credit...Elsa/Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 12:01 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 12 NO GOAL! Tunisia will win, 1-0. And what a strange sight it is as the referee walks back on after looking at the review monitor. The fans roar in approval, their disappointment salved, just for a moment, at the prospect of a moral victory against France.
They will go home both disappointed and happy, and when you know you’re out of the World Cup, maybe that’s enough.
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Credit...Tolga Bozoglu/EPA, via ShutterstockImage
Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 12:00 p.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
Wait a second: They will look at the Griezmann goal on V.A.R. A quick replay seems to show he was offside in the buildup to the goal. It won’t change anything: Tunisia is still out because of the Australians’ win. All it will have now is the chance for a Tunisian victory.
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Credit...Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersNov. 30, 2022, 11:57 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 8 GOAL! Now Tunisia won’t even get the moral victory: Griezmann scores to let France steal a draw. The defending champions will win the group, and the Tunisians will be left with the sting of two crushing bits of news within two minutes.
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Credit...Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 11:56 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
90′ + 5 France tries another free kick that comes to nothing, but the Tunisian fans don’t see it: They’re all staring at their phones, hoping to see a Denmark goal come up and save them.
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Credit...Benoit Tessier/ReutersAustralia 1, Denmark 0
Australia Advances
Final: Australia defeats Denmark, 1-0, and advances to the knockout round of the World Cup for the second time in its history! Mathew Ryan, who keeps goal for F.C.K. in Denmark, with the shutout. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:43 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
82′ Slimane is off for Tunisia, replaced by Ali Abdi. But he goes off unusually slow, suggesting that his team — or at least Slimane unilaterally — has decided to lock down this win and hope the other game delivers better news.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:44 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
That is risky, however; France has been better since the subs, and if it gets a goal Tunisia will have to frantically race for a second goal. Every second will count then.
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Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 11:40 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
80′ France, unsurprisingly, looks much more dangerous with its best players now in the game running at a tiring Tunisia. But it will win the group with these scores, so its push is mainly a point of professional pride.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:37 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
75′ Griezmann is on for France now as well. A French goal would of course be devastating for Tunisia. But its bigger problem at the moment is that it needs Denmark to score in order to advance.
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Credit...Mohamed Messara/EPA, via ShutterstockAustralia 1, Denmark 0
Time Running Out for Danes
75' Denmark seems stunned by the Australia goal and is struggling to get its attack going again. A fairly open header in the box by Andreas Cornelius goes comically wide. Denmark must score twice now to have a chance to advance, and with time running out, that is a daunting task. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
63′ France has decided to fight: Mbappé and Rabiot come on to try to press the attack, and William Saliba, the young Arsenal defender, swaps in for Varane at the back.
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Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesImage
Credit...Siphiwe Sibeko/ReutersNov. 30, 2022, 11:22 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
61′ Tunisia would have been through if its lead held and the other game remained tied. But Australia has just gone ahead of Denmark and would finish ahead of Tunisia on points if it wins.
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Credit...Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockImage
Credit...Aijaz Rahi/Associated PressScore Update: Australia 1, Denmark 0
Australia Takes the Lead
61' GOAL! Australia has taken the lead! Mathew Leckie gets a hold of a long ball on a counter attack, beats two defenders with his footwork and drives the ball home! That goal puts Australia tentatively into the next round even though Tunisia has taken a lead in its game. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:20 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
60′ That will be Khazri’s last contribution today: Moments after he scores, he is subbed off. He gets a hero’s welcome on the bench and a full-throated serenade from the fans, but he will watch the rest of this from the bench.
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Credit...Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 11:15 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
58′ GOAL! Tunisia is finally rewarded and leads, 1-0.
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Credit...Carl Recine/ReutersImage
Credit...Carl Recine/ReutersImage
Credit...Clive Mason/Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 11:18 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
What a reward for Khazri, who has been one of Tunisia’s most relentless attackers. Ellyes Skhiri started the attack with a strip in midfield, and Khazri was off against a backpedaling France. He beats everyone, cuts around Varane and sends a low, left-footed shot past Mandanda.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:07 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
47′ Khazri went down in a heap there under a challenge from Tchouaméni in the penalty area. The referee had a great look, though. Tunisia wants him to take a second via V.A.R., but he’s not going to do that. Play moves on.
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Credit...Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesAustralia 0, Denmark 0
Second Half Under Way
46' The second half has kicked off. Denmark will be looking to continue to attack, but finish with a little more authority. While Australia would love to steal a goal, it may be in for three-quarters of an hour of hanging on for dear life.
Nov. 30, 2022, 11:03 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
46′ We’re back under way. Deschamps seemed to be discussing his options with an assistant before the second half began, and maybe he will make a couple later. But for now neither team makes any changes.
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Credit...Elsa/Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 11:02 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
That performance will frustrate Tunisia: It has had the better of the play and the chances, and it needs a win to get out of the group. But it will not thrill France, either; the French were mediocre and probably fortunate not to surrender a goal.
That said, France hardly cares: Any result will do, remember, since France is already through as the (likely) group winner. It knows what lies ahead and it has rested its starters: That qualifies as a win, even if it’s a tie.
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:51 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
Halftime: France 0, Tunisia 0 — Tunisia had the better of chances, but couldn’t quite figure out how to stay onside. France’s B-team appears to be still figuring out how to play together.
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Credit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressAustralia 0, Denmark 0
Denmark Dominating, but Can't Score
It's 0-0 at halftime. Denmark thoroughly dominated the half and flirted with scoring several times. Notably, it made 25 trips into the final third of the field, while Australia made 13. Denmark has 45 more minutes to get the victory it needs. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:45 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
43′ After France is quick enough to catch him with its offside trap, Khazri is in again. It hardly matters though: Khazri’s cross was poor, and there was no one there to turn it in anyway.
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Credit...Marko Djurica/ReutersNov. 30, 2022, 10:38 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
35′ Wahbi Khazri, who plays in France, rips a shot through a crowd for Tunisia’s latest really good chance. They will be disappointed they’ve not taken the lead in all this.
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Credit...Antonin Thuillier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAustralia 0, Denmark 0
Denmark Picks Up the Pace
30' Denmark has clearly seized the initiative and is pressing vigorously for a goal. That makes sense, considering that it is the team that absolutely must win. Some of its crosses and passes have looked mighty dangerous, but no score yet. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:28 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
25′ A great ball by Youssouf Fofana sent in Kingsley Coman, whose finish was as bad as the pass was good. Tunisia’s goalkeeper seemed offended by it, to be honest; he kicked the rebound back into the advertising boards.
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Credit...Martin Meissner/Associated PressNov. 30, 2022, 10:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
22′ A minor spell of possession by France here draws whistles and jeers from the Tunisian fans, who most definitely didn’t come here to watch France pass the ball around.
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Credit...Stu Forster/Getty ImagesAustralia 0, Denmark 0
Offenses Asking Questions
15' Both teams are playing attacking soccer, looking for a goal. Despite some good chances, the score remains 0-0. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:10 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
8′ Goal! No. Nader Ghandri finishes smartly with a first-time redirection of a free kick from the left. But the flag goes up immediately — he and a teammate were offside (which may explain why that was quite an easy finish).
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Credit...Elsa/Getty ImagesNov. 30, 2022, 10:09 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
5′ Tunisia is off on the front foot, which should not be surprising since it needs a win here. A bit of aggressive, early pressure while this revamped France lineup sorts itself out might be a gamble worth taking.
Update: Australia vs. Denmark
Advancement on the Line
1' Australia and Denmark have kicked off at Al Janoub Stadium, in Al Wakrah, Qatar. The permutations for advancement are a little complex (see above), but a simplified version is that Australia needs to win or draw, and Denmark needs to win. — Victor Mather
Nov. 30, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
The anthems are done and France and Tunisia shake hands and go back to their corners to await the bell. With Didier Deschamps making seven changes, this game is a good test of the widely held belief that France could enter two teams in the World Cup and have both make the knockouts: Varane, Konaté, Camavinga, Tchouaméni would all start for most of the teams in Qatar.
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Credit...Marko Djurica/ReutersNov. 30, 2022, 9:33 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Andrew Das
The lineups are out: Mbappé, Griezmann and Giroud are on the bench.
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Coach Didier Deschamps, right, is resting several of his key players for the match against Tunisia.Credit...Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesFrance is already through to the knockouts, a fact that is clear in the team sent out by its coach, Didier Deschamps. He has made seven changes from the lineup that started France’s last game, a win over Denmark.
Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud, Adrien Rabiot and goalkeeper Hugo Lloris are among those on the bench today, resting for the knockouts.
That presents a weaker (if only slightly; this is France, after all) opponent for Tunisia, which needs to win to have any chance of advancing. But Tunisia has made six changes of its own, so it will have a different look, too.
France’s Lineup
Steve Mandanda; Axel Disasi, Raphael Varane, Ibrahima Konate; Eduardo Camavinga, Youssouf Fofana, Aurelien Tchouameni, Jordan Veretout, Matteo Guendouzi, Kingsley Coman, Randal Kolo Muani
Tunisia’s Lineup
Aymen Dahmen; Wajdi Kechrida, Montassar Talbi, Yassine Meriah, Ali Maaloul, Nader Ghandri, Mohamed Ali Ben Romdhane, Aissa Laidouni, Ellyes Skhiri, Anis Slimane, Wahbi KhazriShow more
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Nov. 30, 2022, 9:25 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Rory Smith
Olivier Giroud, France’s late bloomer, is still proving his doubters wrong.
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Olivier Giroud celebrating after France’s victory over Denmark in the World Cup.Credit...Stu Forster/Getty ImagesOlivier Giroud was never really one of those prospects who caught the eye. Through his teenage years, he was not on the hamster wheel that is reserved for the best and brightest, the kids who everyone is sure are going to make it. He never represented his country at the youth level. The under-16s passed him by. So did the under-17s. And the under-18s.
By the time Giroud was 23, he had established himself as a mildly prolific goal scorer in the French second division, first for Grenoble and then for Tours, small clubs with close horizons. There is no shame in that, of course: You have to be exceptional, after all, merely to be a decent professional athlete. But 23 is not young, not in soccer terms. Giroud’s chance seemed to have passed him by. It had not.
In France’s opening game of this tournament, Giroud scored twice. It took his tally of national team goals to 51 (he has made 116 appearances for his country, a remarkable total given the wealth of talent pressing for inclusion). That was as many as Thierry Henry, the kid who was always going to be a superstar, scored for France. Giroud now needs one more goal — perhaps as soon as Wednesday against Tunisia — to be the most prolific goal scorer in the history of the French national team.
He is 36 now. He left Arsenal, his club for many years, for Chelsea, and then for A.C. Milan. He helped that club end its decade-long wait for an Italian title last season. He may yet end his career as a two-time World Cup winner. It’s not bad, for a late bloomer. It is, in fact, almost enough to make you wonder whether soccer might, sometimes, be a little too quick to judge.Show more
Nov. 30, 2022, 8:54 a.m. ETNov. 30, 2022Nov. 30, 2022
Ben Shpigel
Group D belongs to France. Second place is up for grabs.
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France’s team has already advanced to the next round of the World Cup.Credit...Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTunisia vs. France
How to watch: 10 a.m. Eastern. Fox, Universo, Peacock (free). Even if France loses to Tunisia, it is more likely that a redwood sprouts at midfield at Education City Stadium than another team captures the group. Les Bleus have already advanced, dismissing in rather emphatic fashion any notion that their unavailable stars would hinder France’s flight into the next round. It’s possible, even probable, that France rests some players. Ten players in the Tunisia squad were born in France, adding extra spice to the game.
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Tunisia players training on Tuesday.Credit...Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDespite failing to score across its first two matches, Tunisia can proceed if it wins — and Denmark draws with Australia. The Tunisians frustrated Denmark into a scoreless tie, and as we’ve seen so far — looking at you, Morocco, Japan and Saudi Arabia — zanier things have already happened.
Denmark vs. Australia
How to watch: 10 a.m. Eastern. FS1, Telemundo, Peacock (free). Denmark is capable of upending any and every team in Qatar. But it has yet to win a match, and now it needs some assistance to avoid a stunning dismissal. First, it must topple Australia; a draw is as useful as a traffic light in the desert. Then, it needs a win or a tie from France.
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Denmark players training on Tuesday.Credit...Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesImage
Australia players training on Tuesday.Credit...Christopher Lee/Getty ImagesConsidering that its lone goal came on a set piece, on a header by defender Andreas Christensen, Denmark will likely field a more attacking squad or change its shape — or, perhaps, both. Freeing up Christian Eriksen would be optimal.
For Denmark, that is. Not so much for Australia. Although the Socceroos advance with a win or a tie (as long as Tunisia doesn’t beat France), their charge on Wednesday is to play their best match of the competition, summoning their comprehensive defensive effort against Tunisia — not to mention penetrating the Danes’ ferocious back line — and then surpassing it.
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Nov. 29, 2022, 8:55 a.m. ETNov. 29, 2022Nov. 29, 2022, 8:55 a.m. ET
Ben Shpigel
This is why World Cup games will be played at the same time for the next four days.
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West Germany and Austria in the 1982 World Cup in Gijón, Spain.Credit...Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesFor eight straight days, the soccer smorgasbord that is the World Cup has unspooled at regular intervals, each match staggered to bestow it maximum importance, a full 90 minutes of splendor — plus an eon of stoppage time — on the global stage without intrusion from other games.
Even if upsets abounded, a certain tidiness to the proceedings still reigned: On most of those eight days, there were four games, scheduled three hours apart, one after another after another. It was glorious, satisfying and, for those of us who crave order, rather life-affirming.
Now, as of Tuesday, structure is on a brief hiatus. Dear reader, prepare for chaos.
Starting with the Group A games at 10 a.m. Eastern time, each of the eight clusters across the next four days will stage its final round of matches simultaneously.
France will kick off against the Tunisia on Tuesday at the same time that Australia faces Denmark. After a break, Argentina plays Poland in Group C, which is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. Eastern, precisely when Saudi Arabia’s matchup with Mexico begins.
The change in schedule creates the closest conditions to competitive balance and fair play, assuring that teams do not know the result required to reach the knockout stage before they take the field. It discourages teams from improving pathways in the bracket by influencing results with such tactics as manipulating goal differential or not playing to win. It also inhibits match fixing.
The policy dates to a moment so embarrassing for international soccer — which has had one or two or nine — that it came to merit a shorthand of sorts: the Disgrace of Gijón. Or, in Germany, Nichtangriffspakt von Gijón (the nonaggression pact of Gijón).
At the 1982 World Cup in Spain, heading into their final match in group play, West Germany and Austria realized that a victory for West Germany by one or two goals would enable both teams to progress — and thus eliminate upstart Algeria, which, after finishing group play a day earlier, needed an Austria win or draw to move on.
In the 11th minute, Horst Hrubesch scored for West Germany. Then, torpidity and languor and boredom and yawn. For the rest of the match, George Vecsey wrote in The New York Times, “West Germany made more kicks backward than forward.” The arrangement secured both teams’ passage.
In his book about the rise of African soccer, “Feet of the Chameleon,” Ian Hawkey wrote that Algeria fans waved bank notes at the players, and that German television called it “the most shameful day in the history of our Football Federation.”
Algeria complained to FIFA, but no punishment would be levied. Instead, FIFA responded by amending its rules: Starting with the 1986 World Cup, all final matches in a group would be held concurrently. So, now they are.
Enjoy the mayhem. Embrace the absurdity.Show more
Nov. 22, 2022, 5:42 a.m. ETNov. 22, 2022Nov. 22, 2022, 5:42 a.m. ET
Victor Mather
What is offside? We’ll help you understand.
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Novice fans don’t understand it. Longtime fans claim to understand it, but then openly disagree about it. Referees and their assistants are trained to spot it but often have to turn to replays to make sure they’ve got it right.
The actor Ryan Reynolds — who, remember, owns a soccer team — admits he doesn’t understand it but has sought cover by saying, “in fairness, nobody understands the offside rule.”
But now you will as we examine a classic example and some trickier scenarios below.
What Is Offside in Soccer?
Understanding the rule can be tricky. This is your guide.Show more
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Sept. 6, 2022, 2:00 a.m. ETSept. 6, 2022Sept. 6, 2022, 2:00 a.m. ET
Tariq Panja
Kylian Mbappé Is Coming for It All
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Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York TimesKylian Mbappé will eventually turn up for his interview in an oversized vehicle outfitted with tinted windows, and accompanied by his mother, two P.R. reps, two lawyers, a small documentary crew, a stylist and a friend whose role is, initially, unclear. This is how one of the world’s biggest sports stars travels these days. Kylian Mbappé doesn’t just walk through the door. He arrives.
But not just yet.
First comes a large security man who has politely requested — and this request is clearly not optional — that he be allowed to make a sweep of the spaces his client will visit, to walk the halls Mbappé will walk, to ascertain the most direct escape routes “if I have to get my guy out in a hurry.” The security man will have done the same thing a few nights earlier, at a Manhattan restaurant where Mbappé and his entourage planned to have dinner, and he most likely will do the same later for an event in Times Square for Nike.
Only when the security man is satisfied is a cellphone produced, and a call placed. Only then is the driver told to deliver Kylian Mbappé to the Manhattan headquarters of The New York Times.
This was the summer when Mbappé, one of the most famous athletes in the world, became one of the most valuable, too. It was when a supremely talented soccer star cashed in on a plan for greatness set in motion before he entered his teens, emerging from a tug of war between his sport’s new money, Qatar-backed Paris St.-Germain, and its ultimate aristocrat, Real Madrid, with a contract that reportedly will pay him more than $250 million over the next three years.
The deal has granted Mbappé new power at his club, new resources to finance his expanding business empire and new prominence inside and outside the game. At one point this summer, the fight for his signature grew so intense that the French president Emmanuel Macron intervened to tilt the balance in favor of P.S.G., and the nation.
Over the next few months, Mbappé’s profile is likely to rise further. He is the centerpiece of his star-studded team in Paris, first among equals that include the Brazilian superstar Neymar and the Argentine playmaker Lionel Messi, as it seeks to end its thus far fruitless efforts to win the Champions League. In November, Mbappé will travel to Qatar, where his France squad will try to become the first team since Pelé’s Brazil to retain the World Cup.
But first he has agreed to an interview. He has quite a bit to talk about.
The Start
It was one of those evergreen assignments that schoolteachers give, a prompt to get students to pause and ponder their futures, to explore what they want to be. In May 2014, 15-year-old Kylian Mbappé and his classmates at the academy of the French soccer club A.S. Monaco were asked to design a magazine cover featuring an image of themselves.
An idea quickly formed in Mbappé’s mind. He would not mock up a version of Paris Match or GQ or French Vogue, as some of his friends had, but rather of the newsmagazine Time. As the cover’s visual focus, Mbappé selected an image of himself, seated with his head slightly cocked to one side and his hands clasped beneath his chin. The headline, in a bold white font, declared him “El maestro.” The master. Smaller headlines, tucked into the top corners in block letters, labeled him the best young player in the world, a priority of France’s national team coach, the future of soccer.
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Credit...Courtesy of A.S. MonacoAs a child’s flight of fancy, the mocked-up magazine cover could not have been more prescient. Four years after he submitted the assignment, Mbappé appeared on the front cover of the actual Time magazine. Those headlines proved prophetic, too. By age 19, Mbappé had already led France to the World Cup title, becoming the first teenager since Pelé to score in the final. He was widely regarded as the best young player in the world. He represented, by nearly anyone’s assessment, the future.
“Crazy,” Mbappé, 23, said when he was shown the image of the magazine cover at the start of an interview in June. It is a word he uses often to describe the arc of his life. “Because, you know, when you are 15, you have ambition,” he said. “Every kid has ambition. But when that comes true, after only a few years, it’s something crazy.”
For Mbappé, all the fanfare, all the parts of his traveling circus and all the meetings with fashion brands and book publishers and media moguls are not so much “crazy” but the normal features of his fast-forward life.
Josefina Santos for The New York TimesItem 1 of 8
It is a life that he has been groomed for since showing the first glimpses of his otherworldly talent in Bondy, part of the network of suburbs on the outskirts of Paris that can lay a claim to being the world’s richest vein of soccer talent. It is why he learned to speak multiple languages while still in his teens, to be prepared for the places he wanted to go. It is why he and his family chose A.S. Monaco, in the French league, to nurture his talents instead of one of the many bigger, richer, more high-profile clubs that were pursuing him.
Yet even in that environment, Mbappé was always a little different from the other prospects in his classes, his teachers said: intelligent and poised, possessed of the type of confidence and maturity that made him stand out. “It seemed to us,” one teacher said after watching Mbappé interviewed on video for a different school project at 16, “like he had been doing this for 10 years.”
The Rise
Long before he was a professional, Mbappé had received admiring glances from well beyond his Paris suburb. When he was 14, he was invited by Real Madrid, his childhood heroes, to join the club for a week of training in Spain. Barred from signing a foreign player so young, Real Madrid still rolled out a red carpet that included glimpses of first-team stars and rides to the training facility in a sports car driven by the France and Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane.
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Mbappé, photographed in June in New York. His off-field pursuits now extend to philanthropy and publishing, fashion and film.Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York TimesImage
“I want to do great things,” he said. “But in this type of thing I have to learn. I have to learn a lot of things because it’s not like football.”Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York TimesThe first momentous decision of his career — signing with Monaco, a team with a rich history of unearthing and fast-tracking gifted young prospects — turned out to be a masterstroke. Mbappé made his debut for the club at 16, played an integral role in its improbable run to the Champions League semifinals two years later, and then joined P.S.G. for the second-highest price ever paid for a soccer player.
Just like Mbappé’s teachers, Unai Emery, the coach who signed the forward when he joined P.S.G., recalled being struck by the player’s sense of self assuredness. Emery and Mbappé had met in Paris before the teenager agreed to return to the capital, and it was in that meeting when Mbappé laid out his demands. They were not about money.
Emery, Mbappé told the Spanish coach, must cast aside the fact that he was only 18 and treat him instead as he would an experienced professional. Emery had to promise that he would not drop Mbappé from the lineup if he had a single poor performance; he must be allowed to play through it and could only be sent to the bench if such performances persisted. Emery agreed, but it hardly mattered: Mbappé, he joked, almost never had a bad game.
What stood out for Emery at the time was the sense that there was an inevitability about Mbappé’s future, that the doubts that sometimes stunted the progress of other gifted youngsters did not seem to be a factor at any point during his development.
“He had made a plan for his career,” Emery said of that conversation in 2017. “‘I’m going to sign five years in P.S.G., and then I’m going to decide the next steps.’”
Everything he wanted, it seemed, was there for the taking. “To be honest, since I’m a young guy, I never had limits in my ambition,” Mbappé said, “because I always say you don’t have to put a limit on yourself.”
That ambition, backed by the credibility of a World Cup championship and the options inherent in the $250 million contract he received from P.S.G. to stay this summer, now extends to building out his significant business and philanthropic endeavors.
Mbappé already has his own foundation, for example, dedicated to inspiring children from the Paris region, and he keeps a close eye on the business interests and charitable efforts of other soccer stars. (He contacted Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford during the pandemic to congratulate Rashford on a campaign that pressured the British government into providing free school meals to children, and he counts the N.B.A. star LeBron James as a role model and confidant on business and charitable matters.)
Mbappé has also been increasingly vocal about efforts — or the lack of them — to fight racism in soccer, so much so that he has publicly chastised the president of the French soccer federation on matters of race and at one point in his interview brushed aside the concerns of his handlers to engage on the topic. Criticism of his play, Mbappé said, is fine. What often accompanies it is not. “You have to talk about it, we have to finish that,” he said of soccer’s persistent inability to root out racism. “Me, I’m ready. I’m ready to help.”
A more concrete project, a production company called Zebra Valley, bears some resemblance in its goals and ambitions to the SpringHill Company, the entertainment business set up by James in 2020. The connection is not an accident: Mbappé credits James with serving as an inspiration and a wise counsel since the stars met at an event hosted by Nike about four years ago.
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Mbappé’s résumé would be the envy of any player: a full professional at 16, a World Cup winner at 19, a national treasure at 23. “I always say I dream about everything,” he said. “I have no limits.”Credit...Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via ShutterstockTo learn more about his newest venture, Mbappé’s mother, Fayza Lamari — who with his father, Wilfried, and a team of lawyers manages Mbappé’s affairs — spent weeks in the United States last year with Kacy Grine, a Parisian financier who is Mbappé’s partner in the Zebra Valley venture. Mbappé missed the trip — he was back in Paris, putting in the performances that would see him crowned the French league’s best player for the third straight season — but monitored each stop by peppering Grine and his mother with searching questions. That same curiosity was raised, independently, by executives at several major companies who work with Mbappé.
After visiting New York, for example, Mbappé traveled to California for meetings at the headquarters of Electronic Arts, the video game maker that picked the young forward to be on the cover of the this year’s final edition of the popular FIFA franchise.
David Jackson, a vice president at EA Sports, was in the meeting. Not many of the athletes he meets, he said, are willing to sit through strategy sessions “and then riff on it with us, pointing out various different elements that he might sharpen and change.” Not many, he said, are as farsighted and considered about the choices they make, eager to talk about their “global positioning” and “the permanence” of their public image today, tomorrow and beyond.
When it came to his production company, Mbappé and his partners eventually settled on a vision that will see Zebra Valley produce films that reach beyond soccer. One of the first projects centers on the life of a Syrian refugee.
To Mbappé, the company is the start of an attempt to create a legacy beyond his sport, a way to be more than “just the guy who shoots the ball and finishes his career and goes to the yacht and takes his money.”
“No, I want to be more than that,” he said. “And sometimes people can think, Yeah, it’s too much, I have to just play football. But I think not. I think the world has changed.”
The Choice
Whatever he does off the field, Mbappé’s status will continue to be defined by his soccer exploits: how he plays and, perhaps just as important, where he plays.
For months this year, it seemed to everyone, Mbappé included, that he would leave Paris for Real Madrid, the club that has had something of a gravitational pull on him since his first visit as a boy. He had told P.S.G. as much last summer, when he ended talks about a new contract, and even EA Sports had planned for his exit this summer; it had prepared the latest version of its record-selling FIFA video game with Mbappé outfitted in Real Madrid’s colors.
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Mbappé and Paris St.-Germain will begin their latest campaign to win the Champions League this week. Both player and club are desperate to finally lift the trophy for the first time.Credit...Rico Brouwer/Soccrates, via Getty ImagesP.S.G., though, bankrolled by the state of Qatar, dug in for a fight. It had turned down an offer from Madrid of as much as 200 million euros for Mbappé last year, even though it knew he would be able to walk away for nothing as a free agent this summer.
In June, with Mbappé’s P.S.G. contract expiring, Real Madrid came back again, putting together the biggest contract package in its history. But P.S.G. countered one final time, at one point enlisting the help of President Macron. The vision the president pitched to Mbappé was one about being the standard-bearer for his country, at least for a few more years — of the chance to be a hero for France, and for P.S.G. at the same time.
Macron’s direct intervention in the career planning of a soccer player has perhaps only one precedent. In 1961, with all of Europe’s biggest teams circling, Brazil’s government passed legislation designating Pelé a “national treasure,” a cultural asset of such great importance that he could not be transferred out of the country. While Macron did not go nearly as far in his efforts to keep Mbappé in France, his words did weigh on the striker’s decision to stay.
“I never imagined I’m gonna talk with the president about my future, about my future in my career, so it’s something crazy, really something crazy,” he said. “He told me: ‘I want you to stay. I don’t want you to leave now. You are so important for the country.’”
Macron also spoke of the elephant in the room: the understanding that Mbappé will eventually join Madrid one day, saying, according to Mbappé, “‘you have time to leave, you can stay a little bit more.’”
“Of course,” Mbappé said, “when the president says that to you, that counts.” But the striker did not show his hand. Macron, just like everyone else, would have to wait.
Since he works without an agent, Mbappé said every major — and often minor — decision he takes follows deep conversations with the only two advisers whose opinions truly matter: his parents. His mother, who sat in an adjacent room while Mbappé was interviewed in the presence of a publicist and a lawyer, was a central figure in negotiations with both Real Madrid and P.S.G. over the past year. She declined to answer questions for this article, but her influence is clear.
“We go around the table, and we talk about everything,” said Mbappé, who also credits his lawyer, Delphine Verheyden, as another vital part of his decision-making machinery. But in the end it is Mbappé who takes charge.
Some of the headlines that followed his decision to stay at P.S.G. said Qatar’s money had proved too much to resist — his signing-on bonus of roughly $125 million was the richest single payment to an out-of-contract player in soccer history — but he insisted the vast sums on offer were not what guided his choice. “Because everywhere I go,” he said, “I’m gonna get money. I’m this type of player everywhere I go.”
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Mbappé with his P.S.G. teammates Lionel Messi and Neymar. The Frenchman’s new contract has made him one of the most valuable athletes on earth.Credit...Patrick Hertzog/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStill, Mbappé’s status at P.S.G., and its investment in him, now confers a leadership role that grants him a primacy even among fellow stars like Neymar and Messi. Already, fans and the news media are watching for any hint of ego: frustration after not receiving a pass, a dispute with Neymar over who would take a penalty kick, his coach’s curious public announcement recently that Mbappé would take the team’s penalties in the future.
Mbappé said it was “annoying” to read accusations that he had demanded a say in who would coach him and even who his teammates would be as a condition of re-signing.
“That’s not my job,” he said. “And I don’t want to do this because I’m not good at it. I’m good on the pitch. And outside the pitch, that is not my role. There are so many people that are better than me.”
Yet even though he has decided to stay in France for at least the next three seasons — he hopes to play in the Olympics when Paris hosts the Games in 2024 — the lure of Real Madrid will remain. Mbappé will only be 26 when his latest contract ends, and there remains a sense that the next time Madrid comes calling, not even Qatar’s billions will be able to change his mind.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” Mbappé said, acknowledging that even though he has not played for Real Madrid, the team has orbited his professional career in the most profound way. “You’ve never been there, but it seems like it’s like your house, or something like this.”
For now, he said, he is focused on cementing his status as a national icon in France. He wants to win another World Cup. He wants to finally lift the Champions League trophy with P.S.G. He wants to supplant Messi and Messi’s longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo as world player of the year, and can summon — unprompted — the number of Ballon d’Or trophies each has won, perhaps the best example of how much such accolades mean to him, even as he insists collective honors come first.
“I think I’m about to win it,” Mbappé said of the world player of the year trophy that Messi and Ronaldo have monopolized for more than a decade. He delivers his statement in a tone that is matter of fact, presenting it as a logical extension of his career’s trajectory.
“I always say I dream about everything,” he said. “I have no limits. So of course, like you say, it’s a new generation. And Ronaldo, Messi — you’re gonna stop. We have to find someone else, someone new.”
The Next Step
“The only thing I regret a little bit is to grow up like a man really fast,” Mbappé says as nearly a dozen people wait for him to wrap up his latest work commitment.
For all his descriptions of himself as “a normal guy” who does “normal things,” his life — marked for stardom before he had turned 14, a full professional at 16, a national treasure at 23 — is anything but normal.
“It’s the life I’ve always wanted to have,” he said of the traveling caravans, the emptied restaurants, the bodyguards by his side. “It’s a different life. But like I say, I’m happy. And I’m thankful.”
Yet even a simple interview and photo shoot requires precision planning of the type usually reserved for heads of state or Hollywood royalty. He admits to occasionally wistfully watching others doing simple things, like ambling down the street with an ice cream. On the day of his interview at The Times, he said he would have liked to take the easy stroll to Times Square, two blocks away, and likely quicker to reach on foot.
But as he stares at the door that leads to the street, seemingly unaware of the friend styling the back of his hair with a comb, Mbappé knows that this is not possible.
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Credit...Josefina Santos for The New York TimesMoments later, another call is made, and another giant black SUV pulls up to the curb, ready to ferry Mbappé around the block to another meeting, a Times Square engagement with Nike.
His friend with the comb hops in alongside him. The rest of the entourage sets off on foot.
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