Yes, Kylian Mbappe is from Bondy. Mbappe hasn’t really changed. The kid who dreamt of football has just grown up a bit. But his passion is intact for football, and his dream too.
From his local football pitches as a kid to the biggest stadiums in the world, his dream always stayed there with him. And today, it’s back in Bondy where he sends a message to the world: love your dream until it loves you back.
The French World Cup winner is quickly becoming one of the best footballer players in the world, with super sonic speed and the only way defenders can stop him is by fouling him.
Nike Football Kylian Mbappé: Love Your Dream Until it Loves You Back.
NY Times: A giant mural of the star striker Kylian Mbappé overlooks the road from Bondy, where he grew up, to Paris. At just 21 years old the PSG football star is just getting started. How many World Cups will he win for France? Will he spend his whole career at Paris Saint-Germain Football Club? And what is wonderful about Mbappe is how he takes players on, the game needs more of that.
Speak to those who saw Kylian Mbappé as a child, who watched him take the first steps in his skyrocket of a career, and they will tell you the same thing: All they needed was one glimpse. That was enough, even then, to know.
When Jean-François Suner, the general manager of A.S. Bondy, the first club on Mbappé’s journey to Monaco, Paris St.-Germain and the World Cup, first saw him play, he simply said, “Wow.” The sensation, he said, must have been the same for those who, a decade or so earlier and an ocean away, first watched Lionel Messi.
Antonio Riccardi, one of the first coaches at Bondy to work with Mbappé, remembered a boy who did “everything better, faster, more often” than his peers.
His talent needed to be honed, of course, but Riccardi knew early on that there was no point trying to inhibit him. Mbappé loved to dribble, to skate past opponents. “I never told him to stop,” Riccardi said. “He was the best at that. Why would I have told him to stop? He was the best kid I coached. He is probably the best I will ever coach.”