The benefits of Kylian Mbappe’s surprising friendship with French president Emmanuel Macron have been explained.
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PSG superstar invited to political eventsMacron is a big sports fanSwitch to Spain seemingly on the cardsWHAT HAPPENED?
Paris Saint-Germain superstar Mbappe has been dining with political leaders again, as he was a guest of honour at the event hosted by Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris last week. That soiree saw World Cup winner Mbappe rubbing shoulders with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
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Macron has long recognised the value of sport to his leadership in France, with the 46-year-old seen chugging beers at rugby matches, speaking of his love for Ligue 1 side Marseille and celebrating wildly when Les Bleus captured a global football crown on Russian soil in 2018.
WHAT GUEGAN SAID ABOUT MACRON & MBAPPE
He has struck up a close bond with Mbappe – as the biggest name in French sport – and Jean-Baptiste Guegan, a French geopolitical expert who is about to publish a book with the title ‘Revolution Mbappe’, has told of why the PSG icon is so important to Macron: “The two men have a common and comparable trajectory; they are young in comparison to their peers, and they are winners. They are hyperactive, individualistic and precocious characters. Mbappe learned a lot from Macron during their frequent lunches together and he is fascinated by politics, power and the world. And then Macron is a political animal who loves football. One of the president’s motivations, apart from a fascination for the player, is also linked to politics. Mbappe has more than 146million followers (on social media) and these are mainly French and young. This is a group with which Macron struggles to connect. But another advantage of Mbappe is that he appeals to Macron’s preferred and preferential political clientele: the middle and upper classes, the entrepreneurs and the elderly. Mbappe is perceived as well-educated and invested. He is popular and unifying — he represents ‘the Frenchman we would like to see’, the Frenchman of the 21st century and the one who succeeds.”
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Mbappe boasts plenty of support within the French public, but he is considered to have distanced himself somewhat from everyday people on the street with a host of lucrative sponsorship deals and eye-watering professional contracts. Guegan added: “Mbappe appeals to children and adolescents but he does not attract the support of PSG’s most passionate fans. He appears disconnected from the younger man of his early years, he has become a colder character. He remains popular but more divisive.”