Original subtitles

Who's that little kid?

He's special, isn't he?

When I saw him the first time play,

I said, "We have Pele here."

And people said, "You are crazy."

Mbappe!

For a long time, it didn't seem possible that anybody could reach

the levels of Messi and Ronaldo.

France out!

It was toxic, insulting,

to the point that he thought about quitting the national team.

He does more than just score goals.

He takes your breath away when you watch.

There's an arrogance.

You have to have that.

He's the best player in the world.

Now Mbappe with a shooting chance!

He's done it again!

When you're a champ, there's something extra that is not normal.

He is box office.

He's one of the biggest names in global sport.

The question is always what?

What makes Kylian Mbappe so special?

France are the 1998 world champions.

Je m'appelle Lilian Thuram.

FRENCH CORRESPONDENT REPORTS

The story of Kylian Mbappe starts in Bondy,

which is a town north of Paris.

Very multicultural, of course, like all the banlieues.

There's not much money.

Football is one of the escape that you can find.

But life is tough.

It's the city of the beginning, where everything starts.

I learned everything there.

I just want to follow my dream.

Kylian grew up in a small flat,

literally overlooking the AS Bondy football pitch.

Imagine, like, the window of your kitchen looks into the stadium.

So, you will go with your dad all the time.

From a very young age, he had models and examples to follow.

There was a feeling within that family

that he was special.

Kylian's dad is Wilfried Mbappe, whose family is from Cameroon.

The mum is Fayza Lamari, from Algeria originally,

who used to be a professional handball player.

They had a vision for how to give Kylian the best evolution.

You need, with the family, to find the right environment

for the player.

On my experience, if you could play in France at the age of nine, ten,

11, 12, you're identified and you get an opportunity to play.

France understood very early that you had to put the best

with the best,

and that's why we created Clairefontaine.

They take 20 odd kids a year to be in the National Institute

of Development, where you live, sleep, breathe football.

Where everything is done to give you the best chance

to become a top professional and play for France.

Wow, memories.

You get the bag with the boots...

..that are yours.

Suddenly, you see grass all the time.

And I could play football every day.

You're away from your family.

You're 11, 12. You're on your own.

You're on your own with boys that sometimes are bigger than you.

They're better than you at football.

Clairefontaine - as lovely as it is - it's the jungle.

Kylian Mbappe, at the age of 13, didn't necessarily stand out

more than certain other players.

You can see when a guy went to Clairefontaine.

The way they develop your brain is second to none,

in terms of the game.

By the second year, he was really starting to look the business

and people were thinking, "Ah, I think we've got a very,

"very special talent on our hands."

Got scouts from everywhere

trying to talk to Wilfried and to Fayza.

His parents, they are his agents.

They made the decisions for him.

They had a plan how to, you know, make this talent blossom.

I think it's really, really fantastic if you're a young player

of those kind of gifts that your parents are capable

of turning around to the agents and the vultures...

..at a very young age and saying,

"Thank you very much but no, thanks."

They wanted somewhere quiet, where the academy was good,

producing players.

And for that, Caen, for example, in Normandy.

Perfect.

"We're the Mbappe family.

"What do we do now? Who wants him?

"Who wants Kylian?"

You know, I tried to convince him to come to Arsenal.

I was at his home with his parents.

He was a happy boy and wanted just to play football

and had the passion for the game.

Sending Kylian to develop himself outside of France

was never part of Wilfried and Fayza's plan.

All over Europe would come in and say, "Come to us."

It was never about the prestige of the club, because they could have

gone to Real Madrid already, to Chelsea, to Arsenal,

to Manchester United.

It was always about good academy, good coaches.

And, in the end, they chose Monaco.

When you're 15 and you arrive in an academy,

it's a key time in your journey.

It's almost make or break.

If you're very good and you can show it,

you know that the first team is getting closer and closer.

In football, until the age of 16, its education.

From 17 onwards, you go in the hard world of competition.

Then it becomes a different world.

Kylian Mbappe, for me, when I think about Mbappe,

I think about the little kid that started with us.

Right from the beginning, you could see that he was different.

One of my best friends in football, Joao Moutinho,

after this first training session, he came to me and he said,

"Who's that little kid? He's special, isn't he?"

Bernardo Silva.

Bernardo Silva!

Goal!

He was not shy at all.

And when you're 16 and you go train with the big guys,

you don't want to humiliate the older guys.

He would just destroy everyone.

Sometimes it is a little bit the problem of the players

when their level is too high.

When they are challenged and they play with better players,

they can raise their level.

Some players, when they're very young, they're more focused about

dribbling and about making it nice, and not being as effective.

He didn't care if it was pretty - he wanted to score the goal.

And that's not easy to find in a 16, 17, 18-year-old kid.

When you see someone with this quality in the team,

you also want to embrace the kid,

cos you know that kid can help us winning things, you know?

He was a main part of our campaign in the Champions League

on beating Manchester City in the last 16.

That first leg, Kylian starts.

He terrified the City defence.

Ball played over the top for Monaco.

Oh, Mbappe's in! Mbappe scores!

And the 18-year-old has scored on his first start

in the Champions League!

He put his name on the map of European football.

"I've arrived. Look at me."

We won the league with one game to play.

Winning the league with Monaco is an unbelievable achievement,

cos it's not easy to beat PSG.

Everyone was drinking and partying.

He just went home.

He wouldn't drink because he wanted to prepare for the last game.

He was so obsessed with football that he wanted to be able to

play that game properly.

This obsession for football and this love for the game,

it's what got him to where he is right now, I think, as well.

Real Madrid, who'd been chasing him since he was 11,

had a deal with Monaco.

145 million euros - for an 18-year-old.

And Monaco said to Kylian,

"Listen, this is too good for us to turn down.

"We've decided to sell you to Real Madrid."

And Kylian went, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. "Nobody tells me what to do.

"I decide my own future.

"Not you, not him, not her."

"Me. Me and my family."

When a family member becomes involved,

there's a lot of unpredictability.

Because you are not just the representative in that negotiation.

But you are a mother, a father.

They felt betrayed by Monaco.

Wilfried was not happy that, behind their back,

Monaco and Real Madrid had that deal.

So, they said, "We're not going to Madrid.

"We're either staying, or we're going somewhere else, then."

And PSG were there, they said, "This is perfect for you.

"This is your hometown. This is your home club.

"Come home."

It was a deal worth 180 million,

initially as a loan, and then a permanent transfer.

And that's not the sort of money that Real Madrid would be

prepared to pay for anybody.

The big marquee signing is Neymar, who also signed that summer.

Neymar is very much the example to follow.

You've got to look at who you're up against, in Cavani and with Neymar.

Yes, you want to beat them, or you might want to take their spot

in the team. But you've also got to say, "OK, you've done it

"at the highest level. I'd be a fool not to look at you

"and learn from you."

I was a performance director at PSG.

My role was really about looking at the health of the player,

especially on the performance side.

We knew he was a pretty good kid.

But it's only maybe through the summer we got to understand

the value, and when we got the final numbers, the fees for his transfer

kind of set a landmark on the expectation that we would have now

from a player like him.

Back in my time, he would never be a leader of the locker,

like, the guy who talks, the guy who leads.

He left that to the older guys.

But he was just so good at training and games.

You have to make space for someone like him.

When you start to think what he has,

you think it's more simple to think what he has not.

The balance, the technique, the ability to run with the ball.

You start to realise how good the kid is.

And I said, a kid, you know?

But you realise also that there is so much room for improvement.

We had many, many arguments.

I would always have to explain, convince him why he should be

doing more in the gym, why he should be drinking differently, or eating.

And, of course, these are the stuff that you need to learn.

There's very few people in our game who push themselves

as far as they can.

Very few.

Who do absolutely everything every day, every morning,

every afternoon to focus on getting better.

The question is, how much does he want to push himself?

Paris Saint-Germain are the champions of Ligue 1

for 2017-18,

in what is Kylian Mbappe's first season with the club.

Knowing him, in his mind, and with that determination and ambition,

2018 was always for him, "I need to be at that World Cup."

Everyone knew about his talent.

But doing it on the biggest stage of all is another step altogether.

Even going into his first World Cup, he was still a teenager.

It helps you to be very young.

At that time, not a lot was expected from him,

on the responsibility front.

It's really important when there is new players coming into

the changing room that they feel confident.

And then, when you get picked by the manager, it means

that you deserve to be in the squad.

My name is Perfect Didier.

With the knowledge that you're going to be under global scrutiny

at the age of 19, he was trusted by Deschamps from the first game.

It's a winning start for France.

Not sparkling, at times not convincing,

but relief for Didier Deschamps and his men.

The key moment of the World Cup is the day after the Australia win,

when in the team meeting Deschamps singles out Kylian.

Deschamps is a master of man management.

He knows exactly how to get the best out of Kylian.

He keeps his feet on the ground.

And so this is a pivotal moment in his development.

He scored his first goal in the group stages against Peru.

You see in his celebration that he felt absolutely at home

on that stage.

He belonged there, and scoring goals was what he was predestined to do.

The game against Argentina in the last 16 was one of the best

football matches I think I've ever seen.

I think, with Kylian Mbappe, you have to see him in the flesh

to realise how good he is.

On television, he's incredible.

When you're in the stadium, and he goes on one of those runs

and he accelerates,

you know you're witnessing greatness.

Tagliafico beaten to that by Mbappe.

Watch him go.

And Mbappe down!

It's a penalty for France!

This action is just incredible.

I mean, he was so quick.

So quick that he was almost unstoppable.

I know a lot of people that are fast.

A lot. Can they play football?

Nope.

In that one run, he demonstrated who and what he was.

All the world discovered him at that time.

Speed is always important.

If you combine it with power, precision and technique,

it's unstoppable.

Mbappe...!

Mbappe!

Young players are not meant to deliver or do this

at that age, on the world stage.

Seeing the fruition of all this great talent

in a game like that, at the World Cup,

it was impossible not to just think

you're watching all-time greatness.

He's done it again!

The boy wonder has two for France!

The talent has gone through his body,

and comes out like it's absolutely natural.

That's when we knew that it's more than just hype.

We knew that it was more than just talent.

What Kylian Mbappe did in Kazan that day was absolutely transformative.

The next modern-day superstar was born.

You have first to think, "I belong to this world.

"It's natural for me to be here.

"And now it's natural for me, as well, to express my talent

"and to make the difference."

Now Mbappe with a shooting chance.

He's done it again!

The first teenager to score in a World Cup final since Pele!

When you join a very exclusive club...

And Pele went on social media and tweeted to Kylian Mbappe

after the final, "Welcome to the club."

And you know what? The club has two people in it.

That automatically puts him onto a new level, in terms of perceptions.

To do that at 19 is just not normal.

And the fact that only him and Pele have done it shows you.

He knew already at that time that he wanted to be one of the best,

and he was ready for it.

The belief and the determination to know that, "This is my stage.

"This is my game."

Nothing or no-one could take that away from him.

He wins the World Cup,

and the first thing he does is go home to Bondy,

to his community, to his people.

You could feel that pride.

France loves this guy, Kylian Mbappe.

Players who come from these Paris suburbs, tough places,

they have a fierce identity to that suburb.

They are very, very proud to be able to say, "I'm from Bondy,"

and to represent their hometown in a positive fashion.

The mural in Bondy is him sleeping in a Bondy shirt,

dreaming about playing for France at the World Cup.

That's all he wants the kids in Paris, in France,

is to be able to dream.

After the World Cup, the perception, I think, is very different.

When you're already a world champion,

which Neymar's never done...

It's not so much Kylian being in Neymar's shadow any more.

Now you have this young kid, now he's world champ,

and the status has changed again.

The reorganisation of the hierarchy in the locker,

they happen subconsciously.

Kylian always wants to be the superstar, though.

There's no room for two.

I think Kylian always wanted to be the number one.

If your shoulders are wide enough for it, go and take it.

There are some critics who have their queries about

Mbappe's personality within the group, you know,

the egos and how it all works out.

It was important to make Kylian be able to express himself

and to deal with all the attention that's going to come his way,

that might be separate attention to some of the rest of the group.

I've had a lot of, let's say, thoughts, reflection around

the concept of ego, overall, in sports.

Ego is a necessary drive for success.

We all have an ego.

Ego is part of our identity.

I'm not always sure that we should say,

"Yeah, leave your ego at the door."

Because that will be like taking out something that is a part of you.

But it's more about having hand on the dial...

..and put the volume up when you really need to stand out,

when you need to make things happen.

Maybe because of his age,

he didn't always have the hand on the dial.

I could feel that maybe the parents had the volume in their hand,

and they help him a lot to be able to play with that.

You have to have a great mentality

and a belief to be one of the world's best players at that age.

It's one thing doing it for one season or two seasons.

Then it becomes more difficult,

because everyone knows who you are and what you are.

So, then to deliver, and then to deliver, and keep going

and keep going, then that's the true test of a top quality player.

France had the best team in the world.

This is the 2020 Euros being played in 2021, after Covid.

There was a lot of expectancy that France would win Euro 2020.

And it felt like history might repeat itself, from '98 to 2000.

This is now a different team than in 2018,

with strong personalities, big egos.

But even with all of that, you have a front three of Griezmann,

Mbappe and Benzema.

Nobody can beat you. It's impossible.

It's Switzerland in the last 16.

The first half is not good.

Mbappe!

But the second half is some of the best football

I've seen France play in a very long time.

Pogba!

And it just blew Switzerland apart.

One minute they were really enjoying themselves,

and the next minute...

This is the chance.

Oh, and an equaliser!

With 12 seconds of the 90 minutes remaining!

We probably missed 10, 15 minutes in that game,

and everything changed. And it happens, you know?

It belongs to football.

It was a little bit a mental fiasco

and not the same solidarity in the team.

And then penalties is when the drama happened.

So, now it comes down to Kylian Mbappe.

The world's most expensive teenager.

Has to find the back of the net to keep the French dream alive.

Everything about his career, up to that point,

had to be brilliant

at whatever it is that he tries to touch.

You're not really overthinking it at that point.

It's just happening.

It's just happening naturally for him.

France out of Euro 2020.

You ask anyone who's missed an important penalty,

and they will tell you that it is deeply isolating

and you feel a sense of guilt that is just yours to bear.

It's your burden.

There had been tensions within the squad,

and maybe the most telling, in a way, is that Kylian misses,

and hardly no French players come and console him.

And I think he feels really lonely there.

He had failed.

And now, for the first time in his life, this was a setback.

Unfortunately, in this modern era,

you can just imagine the backlash on social media.

Hundreds of thousands of messages.

Like, sickening things.

To the point that he thought about quitting the national team.

He was affected by that.

He felt it was not right to treat him like he was treated.

What I think made the difference is that resilience, the character

that he has in him - from Bondy, from the banlieue.

When the rumour first arrived in that summer,

like, no, impossible.

Messi arrived.

Of course, there's a lot of excitement.

Because he's the greatest player of all time.

As much as he's excited to play with Messi,

I think he knows that a front three of Messi, Neymar and Mbappe

on paper looks amazing.

In real life, it's a very different story.

Every single football fan was dreaming to see

them playing together.

When you build a team, and when it's bringing someone

like Messi, for example, you have to be very careful

and mindful about the compatibility among the players.

If one helps the other, they're going to all benefit

from the success of the team.

Let's be honest, none of the three like chasing back...!

But you wouldn't expect that kind of player to chase back.

You want them to reserve all their energies for their brilliance.

I don't think Messi ever really found his place.

I don't think that front three was good enough to win

the Champions League, because there were more issues than benefit

of having them there.

Paris Saint-Germain just capitulated.

They had the big players.

They couldn't provide the answer.

All PSG wanted was that Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi

and Neymar were still PSG players for the World Cup in Qatar.

PSG are owned by Qatar.

For the image of PSG - or football, in general -

the best players in the world have to be PSG players for the World Cup.

Kylian is somebody who isn't satisfied with winning a World Cup.

He wants to be the next Pele.

He wants to be the next player to win multiple World Cups.

In 2018, nobody knew what to expect from him.

Whereas four years on, he carries a completely

different level of expectation.

When Kylian Mbappe today goes into a World Cup,

everybody looks at him and says, "You can win this for us,

"so do it." You know?

He went into this World Cup with that commando mentality.

"I'm here on a mission."

- For Mbappe! - And he has his goal.

Mbappe waiting!

Mbappe scoring, again!

Mbappe was no longer just a goal-scoring winger.

He was the talisman of the team.

He would be the one that they would turn to.

During this World Cup, I know he takes the responsibility,

of the team to help the team to reach this final.

This man is unstoppable.

Greatness will come from winning World Cups,

and that is his ultimate goal.

The feeling that we had in Qatar,

everybody wanted Messi and Argentina to win.

Everybody, apart from France.

One had already won the World Cup.

The other one had won absolutely everything you can win in life.

And this is his final moment.

It was billed, wasn't it, as Messi versus Mbappe?

And whenever you get those things, they always let you down.

Not this time.

Di Maria.

Lovely swivel of the hips.

And down he goes, Di Maria. Penalty, Argentina!

The focus is on Lionel Messi.

Messi scores!

It looked like being 2-0.

Very good performance from Argentina.

Really poor performance from France.

France didn't turn up in the first 45 minutes.

Argentina well on top in the World Cup final!

For him to have a chance to win another World Cup,

he had to find the right words to inspire this dressing room again.

He has that capacity, yes, to be a leader.

And in these special circumstances, sometimes there are players

who raise up and bring that speech that mobilises everybody.

You can confuse it with arrogance - but it's not.

It's confidence.

He knows that they all know he's their best player.

And he's entitled to stand up and do that.

The first 15 minutes of the second half is not much more improvement.

You just need one spark...

..and then that's it.

Otamendi had the head start but he's been beaten

and that's going to be a penalty.

And Thuram's down. And that's going to be a penalty.

I think it takes a special kind of character up there,

when you're in shock and on the floor,

you are the first to get up and dust yourself down,

and you drag everyone with you.

His growth from 2018 to 2022,

in terms of almost patriarchal figure of their side,

is quite extraordinary.

But that's done not by being the person you are,

it's done by being what you've done on the pitch,

because that's what, ultimately, players respect.

They know that they've got a special talent that will help them win.

Mbappe...

Gets the return!

Incroyable!

And then it's 2-2, suddenly, from nowhere.

With the magic of Kylian, we came back into the game,

and then it was like a boxing fight.

When you're the superstar, then everyone looks to you to perform.

You either sink or swim.

Lionel Messi with one more twist in the tale!

Those two figures showed up, and that's what the greats do.

There's Mbappe.

There is another change around here - a France penalty!

Well, if he tells you that he's not nervous, he's lying.

If you care about football, if you care about the game,

you're always a bit nervous,

and you have that feeling inside your stomach.

But that's a good thing,

because that makes you ready for the moment.

This is the moment for only the second-ever

hat-trick scored in a World Cup final.

He doesn't shake in those moments.

Mbappe! A hat-trick in the biggest game of all!

To carry a whole team and a whole country on his back

to get to 3-3, and to give hope to a whole nation,

this is what the greatest do.

I don't know exactly how many players can do that

and have this strong mentality to score this one again, you know.

The 22nd World Cup final has gone to penalties.

You know if you've missed a penalty, like he has, on the biggest stage

of all, penalties would have been on his mind.

Well, well, well, it comes to this.

I was surprised he took the first penalty.

And Mbappe will score for France.

And this was like, "OK, I will score

"and give confidence to the other players."

"Whatever you can do, I will endeavour to do as well."

When Messi goes down, he knows this is now or never.

It's his last chance to win the World Cup.

And he rolls it in.

That's incredible.

At that moment, when you are in football,

you think these guys are not normal.

Tchouameni really has to score.

Wide!

When we missed, he was still believing, and he said,

"Yes, don't worry."

He keep this mentality until the end.

It's Argentina!

Kings of football for the third time!

Messi won the day.

But Mbappe's performance was elevated so much.

You could almost see the present and the future in the same moment.

To produce something individual of that level within a team sport,

it cemented his place as the heir apparent.

On that day was a relay.

You know?

Where you see that one takes over from the other one.

Yes, I'm convinced of that.

When you're a child, you want it all.

When you're an adult, you have to learn to compromise.

And that's a learning process of becoming absolutely exceptional.

If Didier Deschamps thinks that Kylian - not can be,

he IS the captain of this team - that speaks volume.

Players like Kylian have a huge power in our society.

They have as much weight as a president of a country.

He is box office.

He is a true icon that transcends football.

Whenever you report on Kylian Mbappe,

whenever you talk about him, it takes a different form.

He's able to generate a level of conversation

that very few others can.

The move to Real Madrid makes a lot of sense for him,

because he's going to join the biggest team in the world.

This will be one of the most iconic transfers we have ever seen.

From a young age, he was telling everybody who wanted to listen

that he was going to go and play for Real Madrid.

He genuinely believed that.

It's another step up again.

I'm sure that he'll deliver, as he has done for most of his life.

He has still ten years at the top level.

That is quite frightening when you look at what

he has already achieved.

I think the most remarkable thing I can say about Kylian Mbappe is that

if he stopped playing tomorrow, he would already be considered

one of the greats of our game.

I think for a long time it didn't seem possible that anybody

could reach the levels of Messi and Ronaldo.

But we have someone in Mbappe who has that chance.

Who would I say is the most responsible

for that incredible journey?

First and foremost, I think it's Kylian himself.

I think his dad and his mum deserve credit.

Hello. How are you?

Obviously, he's not yet a finished article.

But what I can say about this guy, what I see is the passion...

..the will, and the love of the game.

Now he's at a stage of his career where, in my opinion,

he needs to stay calm, stay humble,

because that's what will make him one of the best players

in the history of the game.

The problem when you're at the peak, at the top of the world,

there's nobody to catch any more.

The real competition is with yourself.