Phil.P

🚨Kylian Mbappé on his greatest idol in football: 🗣️Reporter: People naturally expect you to say Cristiano Ronaldo whenever you’re asked about your greatest inspiration. Is that your answer? 🎙️Mbappé: No, it’s Messi. Lionel Messi is my greatest idol in football, and I don’t think people fully understand why. When he arrived at PSG, everybody was talking about him. The hype was unbelievable. Honestly, I thought people were exaggerating a little because that’s what happens when somebody has achieved so much. But then I saw him in training for the first time. It took me ONE training session to understand that this man was not normal. I remember watching him receive the ball, turn away from players and make decisions before anybody else had even understood what was happening. He wasn’t even trying to impress anybody. He was just playing football, and somehow everybody around him looked like they were playing a different sport. 🗣️Reporter: What was the biggest thing you learned from playing alongside him? 🎙️Mbappé: The simplicity of his game. People see the goals, the dribbling and the assists, but they don’t understand how much intelligence goes into everything he does. Sometimes he would make a pass in training, and I would ask myself how he even saw that option. And listen, Cristiano Ronaldo is also somebody I admire enormously. He’s almost like a mentor to me. We have similarities in our playing styles. We both love attacking dangerous spaces, positioning ourselves to score goals and being decisive in front of goal. I’ve learned a lot from watching him. But Messi is different for me. I know I will never be able to replicate even a quarter of what Messi does on a football pitch. That’s not disrespect towards myself. It’s simply the truth. There are things he does with a football that you cannot teach. You can train for years, study his movements and watch thousands of videos, but that natural understanding of the game is something else. I’ve played alongside him, shared a dressing room with him and watched him do things in training that people would struggle to believe. People can debate Ronaldo and Messi all they want, but having experienced both their influence on football, I can tell you that Messi is the player who made me fall in love with the game even more. Cristiano inspired the goalscorer in me. Messi inspired the footballer in me.