« Je me suis dit, si je ne marque pas ils vont penser que je suis un singe » : Mbappé évoque une période difficile de sa carrière
Kylian Mbappé's story with the French national team could have ended after his missed penalty against Switzerland at Euro 2021. Indeed, the 2018 World Cup winner took the racist insults he received after the failed penalty kick very badly.
In a recent episode of the podcast "The Bridge" he said he had been seriously depressed.
"For the first few days, I was like a living dead man because, as far as I was concerned, I had fallen from a great height."
“I started getting called monkeys. I thought to myself, ‘For me, the national team was all about being at the top.’ I thought, ‘You put people up there who put you down if you don’t score.’ It changed my relationship with the national team a lot. I remember going on vacation. For the first few days, I was like a zombie because, for me, I had fallen from a great height,” the Real Madrid superstar recounted.
He recalls that his story with the national team began with the victory in 2018. So, to have people call him a monkey after having hailed him as a "national hero" made him feel like he'd fallen from grace. "It was tough," he says.
"I've made an appointment with Noël Le Graet. I'm going to see him, I'm not playing again ."
The holidays didn't really allow him to recover from the shock. Afterwards, he said he decided to quit the national team. But the head of the French Football Federation at the time, Noël Le Graët, dissuaded him.
“I said I didn’t want to come back. And I remember, I made an appointment with Noël Le Graët. I went to see him, I told him, I’m not playing again – I thought to myself that I’m playing for people who, if I don’t score, will think I’m a monkey. And that’s when I thought I didn’t want to play for people like that. That’s why I got to the point where I said to myself, I don’t want to play anymore – (Le Graët) was sitting there, and he said to me: ‘And you think you’re going to walk out of my office like that and I’m going to say yes?’ (laughs) Forget it. He told me: Forget it, you’re here for 15 years,” Kylian Mbappé recounted.
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