It was an honest answer from Kevin De Bruyne, but perhaps not the wisest one. Invited by a French journalist to share his thoughts on Monaco’s teenage forward Kylian Mbappe, the Manchester City player admitted that he basically did not have any.
“I don’t know a lot about him,” confessed De Bruyne on Monday. “Personally I don’t watch a lot of football. I have a little baby right now, so I spend a lot of time on my family.
“For me that’s a more important thing to do at home right now.”
One day later, De Bruyne knows a little bit more.
Not even Monaco’s own supporters had expected Mbappe to start the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie against City at Etihad Stadium. But start he did, Leonardo Jardim naming him up front alongside Radamel Falcao.
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Who could blame the manager for taking this gamble? Was it really even a gamble at all? With eight goals in his last seven starts across all competitions, Mbappe felt more like a certainty.
As early as the 10th minute, there he was: barreling forwards with the ball at his feet on a lightning-fast counter-attack. In six seconds Mbappe went from his own half to the Manchester City penalty area. He left John Stones for dead with a step-over and cut inside, but Nicolas Otamendi came across just in time to close the gap and block his attempted shot.
That was just a tiny hint of what was to come on a rambunctious evening in Manchester, in which both teams attacked relentlessly and defended horrendously. City would end up getting the better of things, grabbing the final three goals in a 5-3 win, but not before Mbappe had given us a better picture of his talent.
He has been widely compared to Thierry Henry, hardly surprising given that they both came through the youth system at Monaco as left-wingers capable of adapting to play inside. But Mbappe is different, more direct and certainly more muscular in his tussles with defenders than his predecessor at the same age.
Perhaps more confident, as well. “It’s always flattering to be compared to great players but each player has to write his own story,” Mbappe told Telefoot in December. “Thierry Henry wrote his, and now it’s up to me to write mine. I hope it will be more beautiful than his, or at least as beautiful.”
That is no small ambition. Henry, lest we forget, was a Ballon d’Or runner-up in his playing days, who won the Premier League’s Golden Boot on four separate occasions and lifted league titles in France, England and Spain. Oh, the World Cup and European Championship, as well.
But say this for Mbappe: he is certainly setting one heck of a pace. He has broken two of Henry’s records at Monaco already, becoming the youngest player ever to represent the club when he made his debut at 16 years and 347 days back in December 2015, and then the youngest ever to score when he netted in a win over Troyes two-and- a-half months later.
Mbappe would shatter another team record on Tuesday night – although this one had previously belonged to David Trezeguet. In the 40th minute he ran clean through onto Fabinho’s chipped free-kick and thrashed it into the roof of the net.
Related: Teenage stud Mbappe roasts City, becomes UCL’s 2nd-youngest French scorer
At 18 years and two months, he was the youngest Monaco player ever to score in the Champions League, and the second-youngest Frenchman – behind Karim Benzema. At the time, it seemed as though he might also have struck a crucial blow in this tie, giving Monaco a 2-1 lead heading into the break.
He could not be blamed for the subsequent defensive collapse, nor indeed a woeful missed penalty from Falcao. Mbappe was hardly flawless, but even his worst moments often seemed to arrive in circumstances made possible by previous brilliance. In the 69th minute he fired into the side-netting from close range – eschewing a straightforward pass to Falcao in the middle – after bamboozling Pablo Zabaleta with a body swerve.
A performance like this will, inevitably, sharpen speculation of a big-money move in the summer. It is worth noting, though, the words that Mbappe shared with reporters last month.
“I want to be a great player,” he said. “And I think the great players, wherever they went, they won and they left their mark. That’s what I want to do in Monaco. As of today, I have not done enough to leave. In football, everything is possible. But for now, I really want to impose myself and do something good here.”
Helping Monaco to turn this scoreline around in the second leg would certainly be a good place to start. It is a tall order but, on the strength of tonight’s attacking performance, not beyond Jardim’s team.
Until then, Mbappe will have to content himself with a smaller victory: letting De Bruyne know exactly who he is.
(Photos courtesy: Action Images)
