France forward Ousmane Dembele has defended his national team captain Kylian Mbappe, saying criticism of the Real Madrid striker has gone “too far”.<\/p>\n
Mbappe is the subject of intense scrutiny in both Spain – where Real failed to win a trophy this season – and his home nation since taking over the France captaincy<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n “The criticism towards him is very, very unfair. Some people go a bit too far with the criticism of Kylian,” Dembele told Spanish newspaper Marca.<\/p>\n “He’s an incredible player and a very good person off the pitch. Some people overdo the criticism because he’s Kylian Mbappe. They shouldn’t keep going after him.<\/p>\n “Whether he ties his shoelaces or not, whether he pulls up his socks or not… it’s too much. He’s still a human being. With the France team, he’s very good with us, he’s a leader.”<\/p>\n Dembele is a contender for this year’s Ballon d’Or, having helped Paris St-Germain – whom Mbappe left in 2024 for Real Madrid – to their second successive Champions League title.<\/p>\n He and Mbappe are both likely to start France’s World Cup opener against Senegal on Tuesday, with group fixtures against Iraq and Norway to follow.<\/p>\n Dembele also paid tribute to coach Didier Deschamps, who announced last year that he will step down after the World Cup<\/a> following more than a decade in charge of the national side.<\/p>\n “He’s simply an exceptional coach,” Dembele said. “He will forever remain a legend among French national team coaches.”<\/p>\n Deschamps guided France to the World Cup title in 2018 and another final four years later.<\/p>\n Mbappe netted a hat-trick in the 2022 final<\/a>, which Dembele also started, having also scored the fourth goal in the 4-2 win over Croatia<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n Asked about the prospect of former France great Zinedine Zidane succeeding Deschamps, Dembele spoke positively of the idea.<\/p>\n “We hope to welcome him one day to the France bench. I’m convinced he would do a fantastic job,” he added.<\/p>\n Zidane, who won the World Cup as a player alongside Deschamps in 1998, later enjoyed major success coaching Real Madrid and has long been linked with the France job.<\/p>\n The 53-year-old has repeatedly declined to discuss the position while Deschamps remains in charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France forward Ousmane Dembele has defended his national team captain Kylian Mbappe, saying criticism of the Real Madrid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-635289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}