Mbappe’s star shoots to new heights – and even Pele is dazzled

Teenager has pace, poise and panache, and is a potent symbol for this new-look France team

For a while now, the Lionel Messi-cristiano Ronaldo duopoly has needed a challenger: a youngster with a fresh blend of gifts. The game’s gaze is fixed now on Kylian Mbappe, a World Cup winner at 19 years and 207 days. The first teenager since Pele in 1958 to score in a World Cup final, Mbappe exudes star quality.

He was the last burst of light in a radiant tournament. Eloquent with words and feet, this phenomenon from the banlieues of Paris is a symbol of racial and social mobility in a country wrestling with both (as many European countries are). Yet the beauty of his performance at the Luzhniki Stadium transcended politics. It was Pele-esque in its promise of things to come. Pele was 17 years and 249 days when he scored in this showpiece 60 years ago and tweeted Mbappe after the game: “Welcome to the club. It’s great to have some company.”

Plainly, these matches are not for footballers of junior years. Mbappe, though, leaves Moscow with four tournament goals, the Russia 2018 award for best young player and immortality back in France. The sport, the industry opens up before him, from his base at Paris St-germain, from where every top European club would love to extricate him.

The French player he most resembles, Thierry Henry, was an emerging 20-year-old in the tournament when France won their first world title in 1998, with Stephane Guivarc’h and Youri Djorkaeff up front and Zinedine Zidane pulling every string. Mbappe was born six months after that triumph, and now Paris rejoices again to see a multicultural team bestride the world with a superstar at its heart.

“I was told that the country was in madness, that Zidane had scored twice in the final against the great Brazil,” Mbappe told Le Monde. “When you go to the youth teams in Clairefontaine [France’s