As the new captain of France that he is, there was expectation to know how Kylian Mbappé was going to manage in his appearance the voices that emerged within the French team contrary to the far-right National Regrouping party chaired by Marine Le Pen. On Sunday Mbappé broke the low and cautious profile that usually muzzles footballers on high-profile political issues. With the naturalness of someone who carries a clear and prepared message in his head, he used the powerful football loudspeaker to call on young people to vote in the legislative elections on June 30 and to contribute to the establishment of a cordon sanitaire that stops the Gallic extreme right. His speech was not just anyone’s. He was the allegation of a symbol of France, of the considered best player in the world, recently signed by Real Madrid and the great star of this Euro Cup. It is true that Mbappé did not pronounce the name of the ultranationalist party or that of his candidate, Jordan Bardella, but it is no less true that he subscribed to everything that his colleague and friend Marcus Thuram had said the day before. He not only expressly cited Le Pen’s party, he also advocated not voting for it.
The shock wave of the positioning of Mbappé and his teammates has reached the Olympic team. His coach, former player Thierry Henry, world champion with the already multiracial team of ’98, also came to value Mbappé’s words. “I agree with everything that has been said before about what you know well,” he said, referring to the dam. And Henry continued: “I agree with what the players said; I can mention Kylian and Ousmane (Dembélé). What can block the extremes is to vote against everything that divides and a little more for what can unite.”
There have not been many cases of players who have dared to make a political statement, but they have always been notable. One of the most remembered is the Brazilian Sócrates, who attended the clandestine rallies of Lula’s Workers’ Party during the military dictatorship. At his club, Corinthians, he even experimented with a management model in which players decided lineups by vote. That was baptized as Corinthian Democracy. In matches with Brazil it was common for her to wear a ribbon in her hair on which she wrote protest slogans such as “No Hunger”, “No to apartheid”, “Democracy”, “Peace”, “Murderous Reagan”, “Justice for the poor”. ” or “Win or lose, but with democracy.”
The German Paul Breitner, a Real Madrid player in the throes of Franco’s regime, supported a strike by the workers of the now defunct Standard, one of the main suppliers of the National Telephone Company, the former Telefónica. The striking Standard workers approached Breitner to ask him to financially cooperate with his resistance fund and he cooperated. He never wanted it to be known, but it was finally known.
There was also a lot of unrest in England when in the 90s, Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler, after scoring a goal, lifted his shirt to show another one in which he asked for better conditions for the shipyard dockers.
Mbappé has now occupied that uncomfortable place for most footballers, but perhaps listening to the Marseillaise anthem before the game made more sense than ever. The same one that the French fans sang at the 1938 World Cup, in France, after the German players gave the Nazi salute. That day, Paris was Casablanca.
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