There didn’t seem to be anything on for Kylian Mbappé, and for most players there wouldn’t have been. He was standing on the goal line, 10 yards from the near post of Montpellier’s goal, the path to the centre blocked by Nicolas Pozzo, and more defenders behind him in reserve.
But players like Mbappé have the power to make opponents disappear. He chipped the ball suddenly along the goal line, through a space that hardly seemed to exist, and darted after it leaving Pozzo tackling air. Junior Sambia scrambled to cover and Mbappé effortlessly disappeared past him too, jinking to the right with a couple of quick touches.
Now he was approaching the corner of the six yard box and winding up the right foot to hammer it at goal . . . but then a third body was in his way, crowding out the space, taking the ball.
Except this body was wearing not the white of Montpellier but the black of PSG. Mbappé looked on in confusion as Neymar took the ball off his toe, hesitated, and dribbled into the recovering Pozzo, who bundled it away. The smiles team-mates exchange in such circumstances are usually described as rueful, but this time Mbappé's was unmistakably more of a grimace.
Neymar and Mbappé might patch things up at training the next day, but the stan armies will fight on, stoking their rivalry
Neither Mbappé or Neymar could add to Idrissa Gueye’s 14th-minute goal, and with a couple of minutes to go Mbappé and Angel Di María were replaced by Mauro Icardi and Julian Draxler. Draxler’s first action was to move into space on the right of the box, accept a pass from Neymar and drive a low shot through the goalkeeper for 2-0.
The Parisian crowd celebrated, but the happiness was not universal. Canal+ cameras, peeping towards the back of the PSG bench, picked out Mbappé watching with a bitter expression.
He spoke to the team-mate next to him, the first goalscorer Gueye, who had come off a few minutes earlier - and he neglected to cover his mouth as he did so. The lipreaders claimed he had said: “Ce clochard, il ne me fait pas la passe” - “this tramp doesn’t give me that pass.”
As far as the pundits could make out, Mbappé was probably referring back to an incident in the 66th minute, when Neymar had seen him in a good position but decided to go himself, wasting the chance. It turned out Neymar had been offside anyway but he didn’t know that, and Mbappé had not hidden his anger at the time.
In one way, this is all entirely normal. Star forwards doing selfish things, players losing their temper and bitching about each other because they are frustrated with themselves.
Stars
But these are not normal players. When you are dealing with stars of this level it’s not just about managing the usual concerns - their complex personalities, the manoeuvrings of their agents, the rivalries of their entourage, the jockeying of corporate interests, or the various agendas of troublemaking pundits and journalists.
There is also the insane intensity of the social media circus that surrounds them: the hundreds of thousands of camp followers who have hitched themselves to these stars and by some mysterious psychological process become completely personally identified with them. These vast volunteer armies see any perceived attack on the star as an attack on them personally, and stand ever ready to go to war on their idols’ behalf.
Di María revealed three years ago that meme persecution from Argentina fans had caused him to go into therapy
No sooner had the ‘clochard’ sensation hit the internet than the Neymar stans launched countermeasures. Amid the predictable denunciations of Mbappé’s arrogance and egotism, a video appeared with a title in Portuguese: “Mbappé reclama que Neymar não dá passe... veja o motivo” - “Mbappé complains Neymar doesn’t pass . . . see why.”
Somebody had actually gone to the trouble of finding a bunch of instances over the last couple of seasons where Neymar passed the ball to Mbappé only for Mbappé to miss the chance. The object of the exercise was evidently to prove that Mbappé - the best player in the world - is actually little more than a donkey, unworthy of Neymar’s passes.
This isn’t just a squabble between footballers - it’s an infowar. Neymar and Mbappé might patch things up at training the next day, but the stan armies will fight on, stoking their rivalry. Are the players affected by the roar of bullshit that surrounds their every action? Of course they are.
Di María revealed three years ago that meme persecution from Argentina fans had caused him to go into therapy. Why do you think Mbappé was so angry in the first place? Because, after four matches without a goal, he is feeling the pressure. Four games with no goals shouldn’t be that big a deal - he still leads PSG’s squad in both goals and assists. Except that when you are in his position, it is.
Every time he doesn’t score, he knows a million people on the internet are calling him a fraud.
Messi's behaviour might seem unreasonable and selfish - until you consider the deluge of trolling that is unleashed every time he plays and doesn't score
Last weekend, PSG's coach Mauricio Pochettino took off Lionel Messi in the 76th minute of the game against Lyon. Messi appeared to ignore Pochettino's attempt at a handshake as he walked off. Pochettino explained later: "I asked him how he was and he said 'fine'."
But Messi was not fine. As far as Messi is concerned you simply do not substitute Lionel Messi, even if he is the oldest man on the pitch, and seems totally exhausted, and looks like he might even be injured (it later transpired that he was), and hasn’t done anything in half an hour.
Messi’s behaviour might seem unreasonable and selfish - until you consider the deluge of trolling that is unleashed every time he plays and doesn’t score. You could argue that he should be used to it by now, but can anyone ever really get used to the suspicion that the whole world is laughing at them?
We know that Mbappé didn’t want to play another season at PSG, he wanted to join Real Madrid. He could probably sense how claustrophobic it would be to share a team with two other hyperstars - especially when he’s treated as number three, though he’s now the best.
Tomorrow PSG face Manchester City, a club where the coach is the star. When City suffer a setback it’s Guardiola who takes the brunt of the ridicule. Maybe the Fraudiola memes give his players the space they need to focus on being a team.
