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A day after Kylian Mbappe defended his decision to engage in the French political debate during an interview with Vanity Fair, the leaders of the far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen, reacted with irony to the French national team captain on social media.
Le Pen and Bardella, who are considered among the favorites for next year's presidential elections in France, noted that after Mbappe left PSG in 2024, the Parisian club won the Champions League for the first time in history and is in the final again this season.
" I know what happens when Kylian Mbappe leaves PSG: the club wins the Champions League! (And maybe a second one soon )," Bardella wrote on the X platform.
While Marine Le Pen declared to French radio RTL: " He left PSG to join Real Madrid with the aim of winning the Champions League. Meanwhile, PSG won it ."
Le Pen's party has long had a tense relationship with the French national football team. Far-right figures have often criticized the team's ethnic composition, questioning the "French" identity of some players.
In 1996, the founder of the “ National Rally ”, Jean-Marie Le Pen, declared that “ it is artificial to take players from abroad and call them the French national team ”.
Currently, Mbappe plays for Real, a club that dominated the Champions League over the last decade, but which has endured two unconvincing seasons since the French striker's transfer.
The pressure on the 27-year-old is expected to increase even more during this summer's World Cup, taking place in the US, Canada and Mexico, where France is considered one of the main favourites.
In the interview with Vanity Fair, Mbappe defended his previous statements, in which he had called on citizens to "vote against extremists who want to divide the country" during the 2024 snap elections.
During the same period, strikers Osmane Dembele and Markus Thuram also made public calls against the "National Rally".
" We are citizens and we cannot sit back and think that everything will go well while we just play football. We are trying to fight the idea that a footballer should just shut up and play ," Mbappe told Vanity Fair.
He added that he understands " what consequences there can be for the country when such people take power ."
Many players on the current French national team are the children of immigrants from France's former African colonies or were born abroad. Mbappe's father is from Cameroon, while his mother is of Algerian origin.
However, in recent years Marine Le Pen has tried to present her party as a more moderate political force and has avoided direct attacks on the French national team, especially after its international success, with winning the World Cup in 2018 and reaching the final in 2022.
In 2022, Jordan Bardella described Mbappe as "a model of integration."
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