In the center of Stockholm there is a nightclub with a private room called Ping-Pong. The place, like most of these nightclubs, allows celebrities and celebrities to have a decent party in discreet conditions. Before entering, just in case, it is imperative to put the phone in a closed envelope and retrieve it only upon exit. All those precautions, however, were of no use, and last week it ended up being known that Mbappé was there, just the night his team was playing against Israel and he was recovering from a hamstring injury. The same one that prevented him from participating in said match, but not in the last one in which he played as a starter for 70 minutes for Real Madrid against Villarreal.
The anger in France with Mbappé has been considerable for some time. Sports newspapers question his captaincy and claim it for other more committed players. “An a la carte selection for Mbappé,” he criticized l’Equipe in an editorial. The popularity ratings of the brightest star in the Real Madrid firmament are on the floor, especially after his departure from PSG and his refusal – or rather of Madrid – to play in the Paris Olympic Games, despite the formal request of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. According to a study carried out among 1,005 18-year-olds, of whom 434 are football fans, only 54% of French people have a good opinion of the striker, whose popularity has fallen 12 points compared to April.
That information will not matter to him. And to everyone who does not follow the news of the glorious Hexagon. But a few hours after Mbappé left the Swedish nightclub on his own, Lamine Yamal did the same in the Nueva Condomina, but limping after a match that used to be called friendly and has now become a business with superlative margins for FIFA. When he had already been called off for the next match, Lamine improved and at Barça the only concern now is “the wear and tear” suffered and an “overload.” They could be called friendly injuries, because in the end the feeling spread that it was a kind of agreement between club and federation to protect the player and balance a dangerous balance that has many origins and various consequences.
Spain is one of the two European countries, along with Cyprus, that requires by law athletes to attend national team calls with the threat of punishment in case of non-attendance. It was supposed to be for an economic issue, but each call exudes an air of military patriotism. The club and the player have nothing to say. Neither do the doctors. It is what it is. But beyond possible countermeasures such as strikes or a review of the calendar – the only way something could change would be to play all the phases of the national competitions at the end of the season – the cases of Mbappé and Lamine open a new horizon. That of friendly injuries, we could call it. If the federations are not reasonable with the players and the abuse of trust in FIFA continues to milk the business even more, everything will begin to happen in a gray zone in which the player’s health will be increasingly relative and his diagnosis, as we have seen, more opaque. Like those booths where cell phones can’t go in.
