As a kid Mbappe was soon in demand. Big demand. At 11, Chelsea invited him for a week to train and spend time at the club. “Yes, of course I remember,” Mbappe says. “It was a wonderful experience. Chelsea was the first great club, the first big club, that I went to visit. So it was a real discovery for me.
“I was coming from my grassroots, amateur club. It was a whole new world. Of course I had an idea what a great football club was like but I was really impressed by the working culture and the mentality of wanting to be better day-in, day-out. And visiting this infrastructure helped me, actually, with my development. I saw things differently because up until then I had just a French mentality and after that I could pick what was positive in other mentalities and build my own.”
He played a match – wearing “Kylian 10” - for Chelsea Under-12s where he was partnered in attack by Abraham, who is currently on loan from Chelsea at Swansea City. Jeremie Boga, a French midfielder also still at Chelsea, and out on loan at Birmingham City, was also in the team.
“We played against Charlton, I think, and we won maybe seven or eight nil,” Mbappe recalls. “I also got to meet some of the first-team players – (Didier) Drogba, (Florent) Malouda – the French-speaking ones and took some pictures with them.”
As motivation, it was unbeatable. “An idea has been reinforced since I was a kid - not just because I went to Chelse. I always thought: ‘I want to be there, I want to be one of those big players who is trying to give people fun out of the game.’ And I have given everything to reach that objective. Now I am on the other side of the camera, on the other side of the TV. That’s the only difference.”

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