Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 has admitted the football world would have \u201cdisgusted\u201d him long ago if he did not have a passion for playing the game. The France and Real Madrid forward also said he would never encourage a child of his to follow in his footsteps.<\/p>\n
In a long and occasionally bitter interview, Mbapp\u00e9 told L\u2019\u00c9quipe: \u201cI\u2019m fatalist about the world of football, but not about life. Life is wonderful. Football is what it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to say that people who go to the stadium are lucky to only come and see a show and not know what\u2019s going on behind the scenes. Honestly, if I didn\u2019t have this passion, the football world would have disgusted me a long time ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the world we live in, and we can\u2019t change it. I will never advise a child of mine to step into the football world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interview to mark a revamp of L\u2019\u00c9quipe magazine appeared hours after Mbapp\u00e9 scored his 52nd goal in 92 appearances for France<\/a>, helping the team to a 2-1 win against Iceland and beating Thierry Henry\u2019s scoring record.<\/p>\n Last year Mbapp\u00e9 left Paris Saint-Germain<\/a> after a conflict that is still not resolved and is the subject of legal action. Mbapp\u00e9 has withdrawn his complaint of harassment against the club, but is claiming \u20ac55m in allegedly unpaid salary and a bonus. PSG claim Mbapp\u00e9 agreed to waive the \u20ac55m when he moved to Real Madrid and have made a counter-claim of \u20ac98m.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more money you have, the more problems you have,\u201d the 26-year-old told L\u2019\u00c9quipe. \u201cSome people don\u2019t see that your life has changed; they want to hold on to the image of you as a child, when you were with them. But you\u2019re not the same person any more. You have responsibilities, commitments, a job, people to answer to \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Of his dispute with PSG, he said he had no wish to harm the club where he made his name. \u201cIt\u2019s my right, it\u2019s employment law. I signed an employment contract. I just wanted to be paid. I have nothing against PSG, I love the club, I have friends there, but this is the only way to get what I\u2019m owed, something I\u2019ve earned through the sweat of my brow.\u201d<\/p>\n In the special edition headlined \u201cKylian Confidential\u201d, Mbapp\u00e9 talks of his childhood and career and is seen in family photographs. \u201cI often say that people don\u2019t know me,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of what is said about me is far from the truth. Some people spend their entire careers waiting for recognition or for people to really know who they are. You have to learn to live with that.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cYou waste a lot of energy if you spend your time fighting it, and you\u2019ll never win. When you look at the great French athletes, they\u2019ve all been torn apart by public opinion at some point. I think it\u2019s a necessary part of the process, and I\u2019m fine with that.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if he felt fans expected too much of him, he said: \u201cI\u2019ve never wanted to accept failure, so I don\u2019t mind being criticised for it. I\u2019m very hard on myself, more so than most people, so I\u2019m very comfortable with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 has admitted the football world would have \u201cdisgusted\u201d him long ago if he did not have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-132871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}