The Mbapp\u00e9s did their utmost to keep outsiders at arm\u2019s length from the outset. The agents \u2013 dozens of them \u2013 who approached them to become Kylian\u2019s representatives ever since the eight-year-old was making fun of defenders twice his size with Bondy were rebuffed. The financial advisers who offered to broker sponsorship deals met with the same response: father Wilfrid would take care of his son\u2019s sporting career, mother Fayza of all the rest, with Kylian having the final word in any decision involving his future, be it on or off the field; and so it has remained to this day. Kylian does not have a Fifa-registered agent. Nobody but the closest members of his family gets a cut from the deals he signs with clubs or commercial partners. This is not to say that nobody else is involved in the projet.<\/p>\n
Lu\u00eds Campos, sporting adviser for the clubs owned by Qatar Sports Investments after fulfilling a similar role for Lille and Monaco, remains a trusted confidant, as he\u2019s been since playing a central role in smoothing the difficulties the young Kylian encountered at Monaco. Former L\u2019\u00c9quipe journalist Bilel Ghazi, who, though unlicensed by Fifa, has been working with players like Rayan Cherki (whom Kylian\u2019s mother Fayza also represented for a short while), has provided media guidance to the Mbapp\u00e9s. Neither Campos nor Ghazi are part of the inner circle, however.<\/p>\n
Yet the time came when the Mbapp\u00e9s could no longer rely solely on themselves and family friends like the Mbomas to take care of the player\u2019s interests, as Kylian would soon sign his first professional contract with Monaco. As they wouldn\u2019t entrust his affairs to a traditional agent, they set their sights on recruiting a lawyer \u2013 the best they could find; and they did. It has been written that Fayza held auditions to pick the right candidate, but this is not quite correct. It was Fayza who approached the 44-year-old Assas University graduate Delphine Verheyden in 2015, not the opposite.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know Kylian, I don\u2019t know anything about football, I accept that,\u201d Verheyden told Ouest France in 2022. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what [Fayza] was looking for. This extraordinary woman touched me, I wanted to help her.\u201d Regardless of what she claimed about her knowledge of football, sports were far from a terra incognita for her. When still studying for the bar, she\u2019d done an internship with a Boston legal firm which specialised in looking after athletes and had not forgotten how one of her mentors had told her that, soon enough, lawyers would take over a lot of the business of traditional agents. It was happening in the USA; it would happen in France as well, as \u201cFrance tends to lag 20 years behind the States\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 with his father, Wilfrid, and brother, Ethan, after signing for Paris Saint-Germain. Photograph: Action Plus Sports Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Back at home, Verheyden came across another lawyer, Jean-Jacques Bertrand, whose name was better than well-known in sporting circles. It was Bertrand who had taken care of Jacques Anquetil after the quintuple Tour de France winner retired at the end of 1969. It was Bertrand who sat by Eric Cantona\u2019s side when he delivered his famous \u201cseagulls\u201d speech before his appearance at Croydon crown court in 1995. It was Bertrand whom Cantona also made a director of his short-lived Cantona French Wines Ltd and Cantona French Brandy Ltd companies, who later sat on the Court of Arbitration for Sport and co-founded the International Association of Football Lawyers. It would have been difficult for Verheyden to find a better-connected and more experienced mentor to guide her in her chosen field.<\/p>\n
What is true is that 16-year-old Kylian was her first football client. She had done some work for the French Rugby Union Federation at the beginning of her career. She landed her first big \u2013 very big \u2013 name, the multiple world and Olympic judo champion Teddy Riner, in 2007. Other great Olympians followed suit: biathlete Martin Fourcade, canoeist Tony Estanguet, pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie and skier Perrine Laffont, household names in France.<\/p>\n
Verheyden is a tough negotiator who will fight tooth and nail for a few thousand euros more if she believes this is what her client is entitled to. She understood how an elite athlete is not just a performer but a brand, an image, long before anyone else did in the agenting world \u2013 at least in France. Her profession has made her wealthy but she has never taken a penny in commissions, as she charges the same hourly rate to everyone, regardless of their fame or the value of the contracts she is negotiating: what she fears is that, should she take a cut, self-interest would impair her judgment; that she\u2019d be tempted to favour choices which would prove detrimental to her charges and, in the longer term, to herself as well.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s lawyer Delphine Verheyden watches on with his mother, Fayza. Photograph: Rooster Leo Rooster\/SIPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Wilfrid had receded into the background of Kylian\u2019s career a while ago. He clearly enjoyed being his son\u2019s father; this was his VIP pass to the parties, functions and sporting events he so enjoyed attending, especially now that Kylian had outgrown the need for the kind of professional advice he, a player and coach of modest achievement, could provide. Wilfrid does not play any official role in the multiple companies Kylian and Fayza have set up to monetise the player\u2019s image and look after his interests in France and abroad. The son still leans on the father for support, of course, but the nest the child fled years ago cannot be rebuilt.<\/p>\n
Fayza, whose influence had grown as Wilfrid\u2019s had waned, was a trickier proposition. She was known to invite journalists to impromptu chats near the flat she\u2019d moved into after splitting up with Wilfrid in the spring of 2020.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Quercus Publishing<\/p>\n
Verheyden\u2019s professional life now revolves around the Mbapp\u00e9 project: she coordinates, together with her small legal team, the work of the 30 or so full-time employees who look after her No 1 client\u2019s image and investments. No wonder she has only taken on a handful of new clients since 2018, the year Kylian joined Paris Saint-Germain.<\/p>\n
In a football world almost exclusively dominated by men, how can it be that Kylian Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s career is primarily managed by women; what\u2019s more, women who have very little experience of men\u2019s football and barely any contacts within? There is Delphine, the guide, the enabler, the rock. But there is also Patricia Goldman, one of the biggest names in the public relations business, who helps define Kylian\u2019s communication strategy, a job she does for no other sports personality: her clients are superstar chefs like Alain Ducasse, business figures such as Alain Afflelou and global companies, Air France and Renault among others. There is Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard, a criminal lawyer who came to prominence when Mbapp\u00e9 had to fight and was cleared of allegations of rape in the autumn of 2024. There is Barbara Uzzan, a Parisian accountant who moved to Los Angeles in 2007 and specialises in providing tax advice to French citizens and companies which seek to establish a presence in the USA; it is Uzzan who is the agent for Zebra Valley LLC, the company which Kylian and Fayza incorporated in California in April 2022, just before signing a representation deal with US agency WME Sports and announcing a multi-year \u201ccontent creation\u201d partnership with the NBA.<\/p>\n
And more important than anyone or anything else, there is Fayza.<\/p>\n