“Bonjour! Neha!” I introduced myself, stretching out my hands as I walked into a dark, wood-panelled room at the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) training facility west of Paris about seven years ago.
“Nea or Ni-hao?” came the grinning question, coupled with a firm handshake.
“Neither, it’s Neha, but Nea is fine, too. I know the French have trouble pronouncing ‘h’!”
“Non, non! I want to say it like it is. Neha? Correct?”
“Perfect! Enchanté, Kylian!”
That was my very first introduction to then 17-year-old Kylian Mbappe, who had just signed with PSG on loan after his breakthrough year at AS Monaco. PSG were getting some of their players to record videos in different languages in an attempt to continue wooing an international fanbase, and I’d been requested to help out with Hindi.
I learnt much later that since most people mispronounced his name (it’s pronounced as ‘Mmmbappe’, not ‘M-Bappe’), he was particular about not doing that to others. What followed was an afternoon of uncontrollable laughter as players hilariously stumbled over words. But what I mostly remember was this bubbly teenager perched atop a metal stool, with mischief in his eyes, a contagious laugh, and maturity in his demeanour. Even at 17, it already seemed like he was going to win everyone over with his football. And he had an aura to boot, too.
I have more photos of Mbappe with his feet flying in the air than on the ground
Nobody accelerates in modern football quite like Mbappe
I remember Mbappe’s debut for PSG and, just a few months later, his first home game with the French senior team at a packed Stade de France. While still relatively unknown to the rest of the world in 2017, Mbappe had already created a buzz in the French media. “There he is,” nudged my colleague, making sure I was in on the hype. I turned my gaze and my lens, as the lanky teenager strolled in for warm-ups without urgency, without as much as a glance to the cameras or the public. He seemed to be staring down a non-existent hole in the ball, quite content to stay in the background or sink deep into his chair, face drowning inside his jacket. If one wasn’t looking for Mbappe, one wouldn’t have noticed him.
Nothing could have prepared me for the experience to follow — not just that evening, but for years going forward — as Mbappe stepped onto the pitch. It was different to anything else I’d seen before. It wasn’t Lionel Messi’s drone-like vision of the game and his ability to move defenders around like chess pieces. Neither was it Cristiano Ronaldo’s electrifying, overwhelming presence. Nor was it Neymar’s spellbinding dribbling. Mbappe’s sole purpose in life seemed to be to tear forward at mind-boggling speed, with the ball at his feet, as if his life depended on it.
There’s this thing Mbappe does, where his body contorts itself to lean at 60 degrees against the x-axis of the pitch, in an arrangement that seems to defy everything we know about gravitational force. While your eyes (and camera) are still adjusting to that alignment, he somehow teleports himself past the entire defence with gargantuan strides. I have more photos of Mbappe with his feet flying in the air than on the ground.
TV cameras, including sophisticated spidercams, cannot do justice to Mbappe. Especially when it comes to his ridiculous acceleration. What the cameras also fail to capture is the tangible alteration in the atmosphere every time Mbappe charges forward with the ball — thousands of collective breaths jammed into throats in order to prevent any sound from escaping, nails digging into veins, a half-sitting-half-standing stance in the stands, as if time has frozen, waiting for Mbappe to explode. As a viewer, it’s enchanting. As a photographer, it’s excruciating. Over the years, with some practice, I learnt to find a happy mix between the two.
For kids, there’s a special fascination for a player like Mbappe
Mbappe has always been tremendously popular among kids in France
One of my favourite moments pre-match is to see the sheer disbelief among young mascots on realising they are within touching distance of their idol and the unfiltered joy of stealing a hug or getting a smile back from Mbappe. They adore their ‘Kyky’ and they don’t care what adults have to say about him. We’ve all seen that photo of an adolescent Mbappe in his bedroom with the walls plastered with posters of Ronaldo. I cannot overstate the number of French kids who have Mbappe’s poster on their walls. For kids, there’s a special fascination for a player like Mbappe, someone with plain old dynamite boots, whose shots can create a hole in the back of the net, who celebrates with a knee slide and a no-big-deal salute, as if to say, “You’re welcome, world.” Nobody does nonchalance quite like Mbappe.
The love is entirely mutual. “I love kids,” said Mbappe in a recent interview on French TV: “First, because they’re sincere… Also, they’re the future, they’re what we leave behind.” Not many are thinking of their legacy at 25 years of age, let alone acting on it. But, then again, Mbappe isn’t most people. Any conversation with him is bound to include the phrase “what I represent” a few times — not in a pompous, PR-esque way, but more to establish his voice and his determination to use it. Be it standing up against sponsors whose values don’t align with his own or appealing to a fractured nation to vote against the far right, Mbappe has never been shy of calling out perceived injustice in any domain, particularly one that involves his name and his career.
The love story between PSG fans and Mbappe never had a lot of love
A giant tifo honouring Mbappe at Parc des Princes
As a child, Mbappe had told his primary school teacher that he would play for France in the World Cup, designing his face on the cover of Time magazine with the title “The Master”. To him, his greatness had always been a question of when, not if. It’s easy to interpret Mbappe’s bullet-proof self-confidence as arrogance, especially when absurd amounts of money come into play. Add to that the fact that he seems unbothered whether you like him or not, and many dislike him even more. And yet, when you watch Mbappe doing his thing live from a few metres away, it’s hard to not marvel at him.
One of the most beautiful sights on matchdays at Parc des Princes is the display of mutual adoration between a star player and the fans — the entire stadium reverberating with the encore of a player’s chant amidst booming drums, with the player surrendering himself at the foot of the Auteuil end of the stadium, hurling his drenched jersey into the stands and wildly flapping a gigantic flag with his face imprinted on it. It’s a sight to behold.
Apart from the rare occasion of celebrating the World Cup, his contract extension, or record goals, Mbappe, unfortunately, never quite built a meaningful relationship with the PSG ultras. Perhaps because Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani, with his flowing locks, unpretentiousness, and willingness to run back for defensive duties and jump over barricades to rejoice with the fans, had this position locked down when Mbappe came into the scene. Or perhaps because the outlandishness of Neymar made Mbappe guilty by association. We’ll never really know.
Despite being PSG’s all-time leading goal-scorer and getting a dedicated flag and chant (a privilege reserved for the ‘chosen’ few), the love story between PSG fans and Mbappe never had a lot of love. The fans did, however, do one better than the club in bidding Mbappe farewell, with the Paris Ultras Collective unfurling a banner in his honour, which read “Enfant de la Banlieu” (kid from the suburbs) in reference to the Parisian suburb of Bondy, and a giant tifo of his image, featuring Mbappe in his trademark pose (with his arms crossed). At his last home game for PSG, Mbappe ran across the length of the pitch after his warm-up to take this in, put his hand on his heart and thanked the fans, well aware that this was the only farewell he was going to get, considering the contentious nature of his departure.
Mbappe’s greatest quality is to dream the impossible and to somehow draw others into dreaming with him
Mbappe is one of the greatest examples of rags-to-riches stories in France
PSG’s Qatari owners have had to let go of their biggest individual asset and brand ambassador for free. The financial ripple effects will continue, in the form of diminished broadcasting rights and jersey sales. But considering the bottomless pit of wealth behind the club in the form of a sovereign state fund, not much apart from egos will be dented in the long run. In terms of on-field matters, Mbappe’s departure is perhaps a blessing in disguise for both player and club. The word ‘team’ is being thrown around with reckless abandon at PSG right now, with seven different goal-scorers in the first two games of the new season under Luis Enrique. For his part, Mbappe achieved something in his first game with Real Madrid that he had never done with PSG — score in a European final and win a European trophy (in this case, the UEFA Super Cup).
I remember visiting Bondy soon after France’s World Cup triumph in 2018, to get a better understanding of what Mbappe and football meant to the people in the Parisian commune. Just off the centre, hard to miss, was a 10-storeyed building with a gigantic mural depicting Mbappe in a PSG jersey, complete with his signature eyebrow curl, standing between the numbers 93 (Bondy pin code) and 75 (Paris pin code). The words — “Bondy: Ville des possibles (city of possibilities)” — were suggestive of Mbappe’s rags-to-riches fairy tale journey from Paris’s hard-hit immigrant suburbs or banlieue Bondy — often considered a violent and lawless place — to having a seat at private presidential dinners. “To the kids in Bondy…. In banlieues (suburbs)…. We are the crazy dreamers,” Mbappe famously wrote in an open letter years ago. That same spirit endures today, enhanced with every goal Mbappe scores, every piece of silverware he adds to his collection.
Mbappe in action during his last match for PSG in May
Having closely followed his time in Paris, I have realised that, of all his talents, Mbappe’s greatest strength is his ability to dream. To dream the impossible and to somehow draw others into dreaming with him. Eighty minutes into the 2022 World Cup final, down 2-0 to Messi’s Argentina, there was just one Frenchman on the pitch who had dared to dream. Moments later, having made it 2-2, millions more were dreaming with Mbappe.
As he prepares to make his bow at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday night, this is what Mbappe will always mean to me, Bondy and, perhaps, the whole of France. A living symbol of the power of dreams, both on and off the pitch.
Neha Ganeriwal is a senior photojournalist based out of Paris, whose work has been featured by several international news agencies and publications.
