“Mbappé left his country, France, for the first time, and it took him sociologically out of his comfort zone. This may have led him to a process of anxiety, and anxiety is the great enemy of the footballer“, he said in an interview with the German media Süddeutsche Zeitung.
To explain his reasoning, the former Argentine striker points to the lack of appeal towards DAZN, which bought the rights to French football last summer. “In France, football does not have as much cultural importance as here in Spain. It can be seen on the DAZN television channel, which has perhaps between 100,000 and 200,000 subscribers in France (Editor’s note: today, the channel has around 500,000 subscribers). Real Madrid, on the other hand, is not only the news leader on Sundays, but also on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.“
In addition to the weight of supporters in the adaptation of the native of Bondy, Valdano also points to sanitized football, less “unpredictable and romantic than at the time“. “This is what Kylian Mbappé and especially Erling Haaland embody. He is an almost robotic figure who is dazzling but has a different journey from all those who came before him“.
