The footballer at the centre of France’s political split: IAN HERBERT on how powerful Kylian Mbappe can be

If the most ubiquitous UEFA brand here at the European Championships is to be believed, everyone is ‘united by football’.

The message will be posted on A-boards and team buses throughout the tournament. Everything from the city of Düsseldorf to the Dutch team shares in the union.

However, the shiny blue paint scheme cannot disguise the uncomfortable truth that neither this country nor this continent feels like a place of such kinship. Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany is appropriating the German flag in a way that makes many fans reluctant to display it at all.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) party, a rebranded Front National, is seeking a parliamentary majority in France’s snap elections due to take place around the quarter-finals of the tournament.

The extreme right is already politically established in the Netherlands. It is the same political background in Austria, Belgium and Slovakia, all competing here.

Given that conservative elements in France share the same aversion to young players expressing a political view as some on our own shores, one could imagine that Kylian Mbappé, megastar and walking brand, would have cited tournament preparations as a reason to opt out to keep out of politics. But he was not willing to do that.

As Marcus Thuram – whose father, Lilian, publicly denounced the xenophobic, anti-Semitic nationalism of Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie in 2006 – this week urged his compatriots and teammates to vote, vote and kick out the far right in France to close, Mbappé was sitting right on his shoulder.

“We see today that the extremists are at the gate of power,” Mbappé said the next day. ‘I think we are all aware of this, but perhaps there are also young people who do not know that. We have the opportunity to choose the future of our country.”

These interventions are complicated and require nuance. Mbappe’s observations about the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old shot dead during a police stop in Nanterre last July, later had to be tempered by a broader plea for peace when the incident sparked riots.

That appeal was made by the French team collectively. This time, unlike Thuram, Mbappé has not specifically named the political party he detests, although that is abundantly clear.

Entering the maelstrom can divide but not unite, and in Mbappé’s case it has led to a certain conservative mindset questioning exactly what right a 25-year-old multi-millionaire has to moralize about how who represents him.

The attacks from a flank desperate for evidence of hypocrisy have reached Mbappé from across Europe.

“All the people who think Mbappé’s statement is so fantastic (and especially the many politicians who join in): that player is employed by Qatar, you know,” said Dutch commentator Weird Duk, who may have a lot of followers because of that name.

It’s not just politically active people who feel this way. On Tuesday, here in Düsseldorf, I gauged the opinions of French supporters about Mbappé’s intervention. Six were for him; four were not. Broadly speaking, the elders said, “Stay out of it.”

This is why the idea of ​​an English footballer publicly trying to get votes or express an opinion about, say, the Reform Party is more unthinkable than ever.

Things seemed to have changed since Euro 2016, when the Brexit vote was cast and Harry Kane was questioned about the outcome. (“I don’t think any of us know too much about it to comment on it, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” he replied.)

In short, Raheem Sterling showed that players can have an opinion and express it, even if others don’t seem to have picked up that torch. Completely their prerogative. It’s a personal choice. The division and heat created by players taking the knee hasn’t helped.

Mbappé honestly doesn’t care if Le Pen’s foot soldiers decide they’re coming for him, and there’s something deeply uplifting about that, because France, like Germany, is in a terribly murky political situation – obsessed with immigration and race and staring in a bleak future of NR power.

Should the party emerge victorious in the French elections, Mbappé and his teammates could witness Marine Le Pen’s anointed prime minister — a 28-year-old who advocates making it easier to deport “Muslim foreigners” and abolition of French nationality for those who were not born. in the country – watching from the stands as they reach the final in Berlin. Echoes there, of the 1936 Olympics in the same city.

The modern history of the French team tells us that the collective struggle for a more united, multicultural nation can create an incredible football force.

The 1998 World Cup was of course organized on home soil by the French ‘black, blanc, beur’ (‘black, white, Arab’) team led by Zinedine Zidane, a captain of Algerian descent.

Le Pen Sr despised that French team – which included Thuram, Marcel Desailly and Christian Karembeu players of foreign origin – and called it an ‘artificial’ team.

That summer a threshold seemed to have been crossed, but Mbappé, the son of a Cameroonian father and an Algerian Kabyle mother, must fight the same battle at the shoulder of his son Thuram.

“There is a situation that is even more important than the game,” he said. ‘I want to be proud to represent France. “I don’t want to represent a country that doesn’t align with my values ​​or our values.”

We had never seen leadership from this most remarkable player. Leadership that transcends football. All power to him.

I was racking up runs so laboriously for a Chirk, my village team in North Wales, in the 1980s that our captain, standing on the boundary rope, used a system of signals to instruct me to get on with it.

Until last week, I was completely unfamiliar with the idea of ​​self-resignation called “retiring”: simply walking off the field to give someone else a chance.

Namibia opener Nikolaas Davin used it to close himself out, allowing David Wiese to come in and take a clearance against England.

Not entirely in the spirit of the game I would dare say, and fortunately not part of the sporting lexicon of the 1980s, because with such a strategy I would have taken a walk to the border every week.

Jude’s confidence shows that he will excel

The big moments, Michael Owen once told me, discussing his devastating performance against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, are about self-belief. No problem.

“It’s the same way when you’re young, because don’t think about it too much.”

He was 18 that summer and knew instinctively that he would excel. Jude Bellingham has the same unhindered manner. And that goes for Cole Palmer too.

Amid all the questions, buts and maybes about Sunday night’s difficult events and how to set England up, isn’t ‘play Palmer’ the most obvious answer? And an absolute requirement?

Football is the universal language

In messages from home, my wife describes a friend, who has recently arrived in Britain and speaks little English, and who brought his family to meet ours last weekend.

Without any words needed, his 10-year-old and our grandson started playing soccer together and happily continued to do so for the next hour.

The universal language of football at its best, forging a connection across irrelevant barriers to create a new friendship.