The 27-year-old is happy taking centre stage under the brightest of spotlights, with remarkable individual standards being maintained. That standing places him in a talent bracket alongside the likes of Messi and Ronaldobut is he happy to be a team player when required?
When that question was put to Leboeuf, the former defender – speaking in association with World Cup Betting – told GOAL: “He’s been created to be the main man. Since he’s eight years old the world has promised him to be one of the best because he was incredible when he was very young and he kept on doing the right thing to become one of the best.
“But we have discovered lately, or he has discovered lately, that football is the collective game and in fact the team is a star and especially with all the big teams that we saw winning titles like the Champions League – Liverpool for example and now Paris Saint-Germain, it’s all about playing together.
“When Real Madrid played awfully and they shouldn’t have gone to the final against Liverpool. When they played Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City – no way they should have won those games but they managed to because of the collective spirit and that’s why I think Kylian doesn’t have that in his computer and when you don’t have it it’s hard to put it in – especially in this world right now where you need to be a star very quickly because we live in a dictator of emergency, as I call it, and also because we became very individual. The Ballon d’Or became very important, whereas in my time you got it and five minutes after it was forgotten.
“It’s a different world and it’s not only Kylian Mbappe guilty for that. We create importance on some spots where it shouldn’t be and we are absolutely wrong because football showed us every game that if you don’t play together it doesn’t work. We saw Neymar, Messi, Mbappe playing together. Now we see Vinicius Jr and Mbappe playing together. It doesn’t work because they don’t fit into a collective spirit and that’s what it is.
“When we saw Liverpool, who was a star at Liverpool? Mohamed Salah? Yeah, okay, but Virgil van Dijk was also a star and Alisson was a star and all those players who fought together, (Andy) Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, the two wing backs, they were the stars. They were crossing to each other to score goals. That was insane.
“That’s why I love football. I love football to see that. I don’t care about Mbappe dribbling four players. It doesn’t impress me because he doesn’t see the game. Why do we love Rodri? Why did we love Kevin De Bruyne? Because they saw where they were going to give the ball before receiving it. That’s the spirit that I love and I wasn’t a big fan of (Diego) Maradona even if he was a genius and a star. I didn’t like people dribbling. I love people giving a pass one touch because he saw everything. Anticipation is the special skill for me.”
