​This has been the World Cup of characters, bold fashion statements, and bantz: we’ve watched Thomas Tuchel circle the England dressing room like a teen at his first all-ages rave, and Iván Barton boot Miguel Almirón from the field as if delivering a death sentence. Mauricio Pochettino and his $500 overshirt have injected fresh energy and inspiration into the wardrobes of convex middle-aged men around the world. Jokester Javier Aguirre, with an avuncular “f— you” to Anthony Gordon, has nudged the already warming bilateral relations between Mexico and England toward their friendliest point since the British-brokered peace that ended the Pastry War of 1839. Erling Haaland has shown that you can be both Jaws at the goal line and Scooby-Doo once the ball hits the net, proving there’s nothing about football so sacred that it can’t yield to a playful moment of online lightness. Even Harry Kane, a man who often seems like he was media-trained in utero, has managed to spark thrilling—if fleeting—life.
And then, of course, there’s the player who towers over it all, the man whose mastery of his craft, temperament, and speech is as serene as his celebratory arms are wide. People have teased Kylian Mbappé since he was a child, and he’s been delivering the final laugh for as long. As a three-year-old growing up in the Parisian banlieue, Mbappé sang the Marseillaise with his hand on his heart, and he would announce—often with a hint of mischief—that he was destined to play for France; today he stands as the leading all-time scorer in French football. His parents’ friends once bought him a model of the Bernabéu as a taunt to his claims of eventually playing for Real Madrid; now he is Madrid’s most important player. On Saturday, Mbappé spent the final minutes of a bruising last-16 clash against Paraguay, in which he buried the decisive penalty, wandering the pitch with a big, goofy grin on his face. Wherever this man goes in the world of football, the result is consistent: Mbappé wins. And he’s laughing.
By now we’re familiar with the traits that render Mbappé an irresistible force on the pitch: blistering speed, bulldog-like power, footwork so magnetic that it seems to summon its own weather system. In France, they call every top player a “crack,” and Mbappé is the embodiment of that moniker. Lean, relentless, and savage, he is the very embodiment of speed—the kind of player whose pace even seems to outpace one of his own names: once Mbappé Lottin, now simply Mbappé. The past month has only deepened our appreciation for these talents. From a referee’s vantage point, the era of innovations that reveal the widest possible array of male forearm hair has, at least in part, clarified just how speed and violence of motion translate into the most effective moments on the field for the sake of the game.