Kylian Mbappe, the France captain who came in from the cold

It said much for the drama that had gripped the Stade de France for the best part of three hours that by the time the dust had started to settle on France’s penalty shootout win over Croatia in the Nations League quarter-finals, Kylian Mbappe’s international comeback had come to seem almost anecdotal.

As French fans drifted out of the national stadium shortly before midnight on Sunday night, it will have been with thoughts of Michael Olise’s picture-perfect free kick, Mike Maignan’s two shootout saves and Dayot Upamecano’s decisive final spot kick uppermost in mind.

But if Mbappe was not the hero, the France captain nevertheless played a pivotal role in their stirring comeback win, following a six-month absence from international football that had seen his commitment to the blue shirt called into question for the very first time.

The Real Madrid striker had already come closest to finding the net for France in their disappointing 2-0 defeat in Thursday’s first leg in Split, forcing Croatia goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic into a succession of saves.

Starting at the tip of France’s 4-2-3-1 formation in the return leg on Sunday, he was thwarted on multiple occasions by Livakovic once again but managed to contribute to his side’s 2-0 victory in other ways.

It was Mbappe’s sudden burst down the inside-right channel that drew the foul from Duje Caleta-Car and enabled Olise to halve Croatia’s aggregate lead with a 52nd-minute free kick. When France equalised 10 minutes from the end of normal time, Ousmane Dembele sweeping home from Olise’s cutback, it was courtesy of a slick one-two with Mbappe that the Bayern Munich winger found space wide on the right.

Mbappe played a key role against Croatia (Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)

And after Maignan had repelled Martin Baturina’s opening penalty in the shootout, it was Mbappe, albeit not in entirely convincing fashion, who put France ahead by squeezing his spot kick past Livakovic into the bottom-left corner.

Having failed to find the net during the match, Mbappe’s run of France games without a goal now stands at seven, which makes it the longest fallow spell of his 88-cap international career. But although he squandered a couple of presentable opportunities, notably shooting wastefully wide from Dembele’s pass when France were still 2-1 down on aggregate, the consensus at the Stade de France was that this had been a captain’s display.

Mbappe could be seen giving several of his team-mates one-on-one pep talks during the pre-match warm-up. The 26-year-old wore a look of steely determination before kick-off and did not even permit himself a smile when he had to pick up the remote-controlled car that had brought the ball out to the centre spot and awkwardly hand it to a stadium official after it failed to budge from the centre circle.

Taking his captain’s role to heart, Mbappe seemed particularly fired up, making multiple exhortations to the crowd to raise the noise levels during the game and receiving a booking late in the first half for a tangle with Livakovic. He maintained a steady dialogue with referee Michael Oliver throughout, notably drawing the English official’s attention to what he perceived to be efforts to waste time by Croatia’s players.

There was a softer side to his leadership, too. When Jules Kounde and Theo Hernandez fluffed their lines in the shootout, it was Mbappe who made a point of consoling them. France coach Didier Deschamps revealed afterwards that he had addressed the squad before the match and was full of praise for his overall contribution.

Mbappe consoles Fernandez after his penalty miss (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

“He’s been remarkable throughout this get-together,” Deschamps told TF1. “He’s doing very well, both in his head and in his body. He said some words during the team talk that were spot on. Kylian went through a slightly difficult moment, but after Hugo Lloris and Raphael Varane, he’s taken on the armband very well.”

By the time France’s Nations League semi-final against Spain comes around in early June, Deschamps will have the usual array of squad composition and team selection dilemmas to contend with. But the Mbappe issue, at least, appears to have been put to bed.

Mbappe’s absences from the October and November international get-togethers and his disinterested attitude during the September break had prompted fears in France that the darling of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns had fallen out of love with the national team.

The context for the September fixtures was less than ideal. Mbappe had experienced an instantly forgettable Euro 2024, fracturing his nose against Austria in France’s opening group game in Dusseldorf and contributing a single goal, from the penalty spot, as Deschamps’ side unconvincingly bundled their way to the semi-finals before falling to eventual champions Spain.

He was officially unveiled as a Real Madrid player in front of 80,000 adoring fans at the Bernabeu a week later and reported for pre-season training in early August after a brief summer break largely spent in Miami and Los Angeles. As he later admitted in an interview on Canal+, Mbappe asked Deschamps if he could sit out France’s first two Nations League games in September to focus on adapting to life in the Spanish capital, only for the former Marseille coach to insist on his presence.

In a press conference before France’s opening fixture against Italy at the Parc des Princes, Mbappe irked fans of his former club Paris Saint-Germain when he uttered the phrase “I don’t care” during a response to a question about the kind of reception he was likely to receive on his return to his old stomping ground. Asked about criticism of France’s performances at Euro 2024, he replied: “What people think is the least of my worries.”

The France skipper produced an anonymous performance in France’s 3-1 home defeat against Italy and proved similarly ineffective in a substitute appearance against Belgium three days later.

Mbappe with France goalkeeper Mike Maignan (Stephane De Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images)

The notes of discord grew stronger in October when Deschamps decided not to select Mbappe for France’s fixtures against Israel and Belgium as a precautionary measure over a left hamstring issue, only for the striker to play 70 minutes against Villarreal just two days after the squad was announced. Mbappe hit the headlines again when, on the evening of France’s 4-1 win against Israel in Budapest, he was photographed on a night out in Stockholm with his former PSG team-mate Nordi Mukiele.

Mbappe’s Stockholm sojourn would culminate in him being named by the Swedish press in connection with a rape investigation that was eventually ended in December without any charges being pressed. It was with speculation about the rape allegation swirling and amid a laboured start to life at the Bernabeu that Mbappe was again overlooked by Deschamps for November’s Nations League games against Israel and Italy.

The France coach reassured reporters at the time that Mbappe had “wanted to come” and that his omission was a “one-off decision” that had nothing to do with his trip to Stockholm. But he refused to provide any further explanation, other than to say: “It’s better like this.” Mbappe offered no additional insights when he addressed the matter in his Canal+ interview in December. “It’s the coach’s decision — I went along with it,” he said. “He’s the boss. I wanted to come, but I can’t say why I didn’t come.”

Invited to revisit the subject in an interview with L’Equipe in February, Deschamps dug his heels in. “I forbid myself from revealing the conversations I might have with players,” he said. “He knows, I know, and from that point on, all is well … But it was me who decided. After analysing the situation, his form and the conversations I had with him, I took the decision to leave him in peace.” Asked if Mbappe would retain the armband, Deschamps provided a less than emphatic response: “I have no reason to say today that he will not be captain in March.”

There was consequently huge anticipation about Mbappe’s return to the France fold last week and from the moment he strolled up the steps at Clairefontaine in dark glasses and a white Christian Dior varsity jacket, he seemed determined to show that it was business as usual. He had been criticised as the leaves fell in the autumn for failing to publicly address the apparent turmoil he was enduring; now his media appearances popped up with the abundance of springtime flowers.

Mbappe arrives at Clairefontaine (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

The French Football Federation’s social media team captured his return to Clairefontaine, where he was shown sharing an embrace with Deschamps moments after crossing the famous chateau’s threshold. Interviewed as he sat on his bed in a navy blue France tracksuit top, he said he was “very happy” to be back and confirmed with a broad smile that he and his team-mates were winding each other up as much as ever.

In a long interview with regional newspaper Le Parisien published the following morning, he spoke about how it was “love” for his country that inspired him to play for France and said that he was coming back “as if I’d never left”.

The day after his arrival, Mbappe told TF1’s nightly news programme Le 20H that playing for France was “the most important thing for me”, spoke about his ambition to win the 2026 World Cup, and said that although Zinedine Zidane was his “idol” and that he would be “extremely happy” to play for him, it was not his responsibility to select Deschamps’ successor as France coach.

Mbappe and Deschamps share a joke (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

In the pre-match press conference ahead of the first leg against Croatia, Mbappe described his “joy” at returning to Clairefontaine, applauded Dembele’s superb recent form and admitted fault over his approach to last September’s defeat by Italy. “I didn’t play well against Italy and people didn’t like my press conference because, in my role as captain, I didn’t bring people together,” he said. “I accept it. Now the most important thing is to move forward and not make the same mistakes again.”

Yet for all the column inches he generated, Mbappe shed precious little light on the reasons behind his omission from the November get-together. “From the outside, perhaps, I can understand (the confusion),” he told Le Parisien. “But the internal communication was always very clear. There was never any doubt between us. I knew why and how it was happening. It may have been a bit less clear in terms of the communication to the general public. But internally, everything was very clear.”

He did confess, in the same interview, to having had “two or three disagreements” with Deschamps, but said that they were “not serious at all” and refused to go into more detail. “They’re not secrets, but they’re disagreements that people don’t need to know about,” he said. “In any job, you have disagreements with colleagues — it doesn’t mean you don’t like them or that you don’t respect them.”

France celebrate their shootout win against Croatia (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

He was no more forthcoming in his TV interview with TF1, although he did clarify that he had not suffered from burnout or a form of depression. “I think you just have to accept that as a top-level athlete, and as a human being, a professional career or a life is never linear,” Mbappe said. “Any athlete can have bad moments. I had one and I think it’s part of an athlete’s career. It’s important to be aware of that and to have the capacity to get over it.”

France might not yet have become reacquainted with Mbappe the goalscorer. But he is, once again, a France player and, perhaps more than ever before, a France captain. After the turmoil of the autumn and the months of speculation that followed, that is more than enough for now.

(Top photo: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)