Euro 2024: Kylian Mbappe needs to unmask the best player in the world hidden behind the facial protection if France are to overcome Spain in semis

Yet, at the European Championship in Germany, Mbappe has resembled a man carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders. The spidery black mask he has worn since breaking his nose has transformed into a metaphor of his trials at this tournament. He has rarely touched the dizzy heights he was ordained to scale. In four games, he has scored a solitary goal, a spot-kick against Poland. In open play, all 20 attempts have gone futile. He has struck once every 102 minutes for club and country, but 395 minutes have passed since his last goal for France from open play. The more shots he has fluffed, the harder he has tried. So over-zealous that in the game against Poland, he stole the ball from the feet of teammate Bradley Barcola, just when the latter was about to shoot.

The bearing on his national team’s fortunes has been direct — France has mustered only three goals in five games. Two of them were own- goals, one a spot-kick.

The goals would come, head coach Didier Deschamps reassures. But it was not the lack of goals alone that painted the grim picture of the world’s best player in deep struggle. In both knockout games, full-backs over-ran him. Portugal’s Joao Cancelo suffocated him like a truck that has wandered into a narrow alley in peak traffic hours. On the rare instance Mbappe slipped past him, he would strike the shot in haste; without power, precision or the beastly curl and whip he imparts, or the extra second he has over others. Mbappe has had a peak speed of 36.5 kmph and clocks an average of 34.15 kmph, both a rung below his best. The fastest he has ever hit is 38 kmph, the mean speed 36 kmph. A drop of even half a kmph makes a telling difference in sport. Mbappe without his lighting speed is like a race car without fuel, or a singer with a cough.

Major irritant

The impediment of the carbon-fibre mask has been debated. Deschamps views the mask as blocking his peripheral vision. Mbappe has to stretch his neck to track the movements on his side. A peskier irritant is the sweat that accumulates under the mask and drips into his eyes. The first thing he does whenever there is a brief break, he would remove the mask and wipe the moisture underneath it. The mask has seemed a facial shackle, but he had not been at his best previously as well. Before the Austria game, Mbappe admitted as much: “I don’t think I have my legs fully. I think I need a good pre-season. To be at 100 percent and properly quick, I need good physical preparation and I’m sure that’ll be better after a pre-season with my new club.”

The substitution in the Portugal game was entirely on his insistence. “I told him (coach) that I was no longer feeling up to it, that I was too tired,” he later said. He wasn’t the same player who exploded into wild energy in the epic 2022 World Cup final. “I think I am just about getting back to my best.”

But sportsmen of outsized talent like Mbappe need just a flicker of inspiration to turn their form and the tournament around. There could not be a better time than the semifinal to reassert the power of his personality as well as the depth of his skills. A depleted Spain backline furnishes a fine opportunity. The Spaniards would be without the inspirational right-back Dani Carvajal as well as right-sided centre-back Robin Le Normand. Replacing them could be the experienced but ageing Jesus Navas (38) and Nacho (34). A stirred Mbappe could make them, and younger ones too, run around him in circles. Whether he succeeds in imposing himself on them could define the game.

Other concerns

But Mbappe is not France’s sole worry. Deschamps still trusts his talisman blindly that he lets him run the play, the side tuned to maximise his enormous potential to influence by a moment of pure brilliance. France are capable of being more than a one-man show. The sudden and unexpected drop in form of midfield show-stealer Antoine Griezmann has been bothersome too. He was France’s most important player in Qatar, but has looked considerably diminished in Germany. His vast canvas of passing has looked faded. Subsequently, Deschamps has fiddled with his midfield permutations. In all five games, he adopted different formations —Griezmann himself was deployed on the right, at the centre, in a deeper role — but none worked to make the midfield coherent. A positive from the Portugal fixture could be the flashes of wiles Ousmane Dembele displayed on the right wing, coming on as a substitute. As relief would be the return of Adrien Rabiot from suspension.

The listlessness of their forward line and the muddle in their midfield were salvaged by their impregnable backline and the industriousness of defensive midfielder Eduardo Camavinga. But for France to leap over the tallest of hurdles so far, their talisman has to unmask his infinite talents and their midfield mainstay has to rediscover his touch and vision.

But then, this has been a year when Mbappe’s wishes have been fulfilled. So he is entitled to dream of winning his first Euro.