President Emmanuel Macron claims that Kylian Mbappe made France proud with a “extraordinary” performance despite Les Bleus’ devastating World Cup final loss to Argentina.
After falling behind by two goals at the Lusail Stadium, France were doomed to a demoralizing defeat, but Mbappe scored twice in a span of 97 seconds to force overtime.
Mbappe scored a late penalty to become just the second player—after England’s Geoff Hurst in 1966—to score a hat-trick in a men’s World Cup final after watching teammate Lionel Messi give Argentina the lead back.
While shoot-out misses from Kingsley Coman and Aurelien Tchouameni crushed France’s hopes of retaining the trophy, Macron – who was seen talking with Mbappe after the defeat – said the forward had made his country proud.
“We were very far behind at the end of the first period. It’s already happened, there have been comebacks like that, but it’s very rare in the history of football,” Macron told RMC Sport.
“We came back tremendously. It’s extraordinary what Mbappe did, but the whole team were hungry again. I believed in it immensely.
“Afterwards, we performed a second miracle by coming back from nowhere. We had match point.
“Mbappe is a very great player, but he is young, I told him he was only 23. He was top scorer at this World Cup. He won a World Cup [in 2018], he made a final.
“I was as sad as him. I said he made us very proud and in the end we lost a football match, we went to nothing. That’s sport.”
Mbappe’s treble took him to 12 World Cup goals in his career, drawing him level with Pele’s tally and making him the youngest player to reach double figures at the tournament, aged 23 years and 363 days.
The France forward also became just the fifth player to score in two World Cup finals, after Vava (1958, 1962), Pele (1958, 1970), Paul Breitner (1974, 1982) and Zinedine Zidane (1998, 2006).