EXCLUSIVE | Jérémie Aliadière on Kylian Mbappé: ‘at the end of his career, I think he’ll be the best of all time’ | OneFootball

Get French Football News sat down with former Arsenal and France youth international striker Jérémie Aliadière to look back on les Bleus‘ World Cup semi-final defeat and to discuss the future of the France team and its players.

In this fourth and final part, he discussed where Kylian Mbappé sits among the footballing greats who have represented France. 

Let’s talk about another individual: Kylian Mbappé. Before the semi-final, we were obviously talking about the golden boot and record World Cup goalscorer, both of which he achieved anyway. We were talking about the Ballon d’Or, of whether he would surpass the legends of France like Zinedine Zidane, Michel Platini, Raymond Kopa – I would put Antoine Griezmann up there too. Do you think the semi-final defeat means that he still has a little way to go to be right up there with them?

I think the football world and football people react a lot in the moment, to the emotions of the event, that day, the next day, the next couple of days. Then time passes. And the day that Kylian Mbappé retires, I think that people will remember a lot of the things that he did and they will realise. Zidane will always be Zidane because we will always remember what he did in the 1998 World Cup. But Zidane has also done some things – like the 2006 final when he headbutted Marco Materazzi, which maybe cost us the final. But people forget that a bit because they retain the image of the 1998 World Cup and I’m the same, as I was a kid then.

Even then, he didn’t have a great World Cup – he just happened to score two goals in the final.

Exactly – he even got a red card against Saudi Arabia and missed two matches. So there you go. And don’t forget that Mbappé has already won a World Cup too, in 2018 in Russia, when he was 18 years old. And he is already France’s record scorer at his young age [he will turn 28 in December], so imagine in 4 years, all the France records that he will smash. So you can’t not put him on the same level as Zidane or Platini – for me he is.

Now we’re talking just after a big disappointment and obviously it’s easy to say “well no, he’s not at the same level” because the image that we have in our heads, Zidane it’s the 1998 World Cup, Platini is Platini.

So you have to wait and, at the end of his career, I think he’ll be the best of all time because in terms of goals scored, all the records, everything he has done, it’s extraordinary. And who says that he won’t win the World Cup in four years’ time? He will be 31 years old and 30-32 is the best time for a striker. And there is the European championship before then in two years’ time. So yes, for me he will always be right up there with the best.

Jérémie Aliadière was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of Betinia

GFFN | Jeremy Smith