Mbappé, Pelé, Muhammad Ali: is the Qatar 2022 scorer on his way to match those monsters?

It happened in 1970: the world understood that we were facing a king above a footballer. A godsend. A crack beyond all human understanding. It was Pele and his third World Cup with the Brazilian team, the team that elevated to a work of art what was a simple game of chasing the ball invented by the English. Fewer and fewer men and women are witnesses of this marvel. Those who remain of those privileged gentlemen, are increasingly grateful for having been born at that time. In fact, just like that they are kids again.

For this reason, today that we are seeing the wonder that is the World Cup of Kylian Mbappé, scorer of Qatar 2022 with 5 goals, the only real way to accompany history for the future is to save everything, archive everything, instagram it all.

LISTEN HERE:

By physique, it should be compared to the body of an older athlete, Muhammad Ali. That back/wall in a triangle, those long legs whose stride seems to reach from area to area. By career, he has a better showcase than Michael Platini and is on his way to surpassing Zinedine Zidane: a World Cup and a Euro, at only 23 years old. And for now, Kilyan Mbappé must be the most intimidating striker in Qatar 2022: not only has he scored 33 goals in 63 games for France since his debut – an average of 0.61%, one goal every two games – but today he is the flag of the world champion. He wanders and attacks. He yields to his partner -Giroud’s 1-0 against Poland- and whets his appetite to score two.

The goal is so natural to him that, before turning 24, he has 250 goals in professional football. At that age, Messi had made 197. CR7, 132. But that’s not all, the Frenchman surpassed Pelé as the player with the most goals in the World Cups before the age of 24: Edson Arantes do Nascimento then had eight of his twelve goals.

***

In 2017, after visiting the historic Peugeot Automobile Museum, I convinced some journalist friends to invest their time in trying to guess the future: we were going to see the France Netherlands at the Stade de France and we didn’t know, of course, that we were about to about to witness the new world champion. France clearly beat the Netherlands in Paris with a resounding win (4-0). The scorers were Griezmann, Lemar (double) and the young promise of French football, the one with Cristiano’s posters, Kylian Mbappé. Already then he had the stride of the Ronaldo Phenomenon, the power of Cristiano and the goal that never falls in price of the best in the world.

I have the ticket saved in a drawer, as proof of my sighting of a Martian.

Two weeks ago I saw it in Doha and every photo, every second, every moment seen there, I have uploaded to a drive. One by one. For my son’s children.

S: