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It was only last month that Kylian Mbappé suggested all roads may lead to Florida. He was in sufficiently mischievous mood to reveal David Beckham had been chewing his ear off about a move to Major League Soccer, dangling the prospect of a reunion with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami.
“We will see, I don’t know,” he said. “The American culture is different. There are no limits to ambitions, I like it.”
Yet Mbappé will walk out in Miami on Saturday nursing clipped wings and thwarted aspirations. The third-place playoff retains some prestige given the names involved. But it pales in comparison with the broken dream of another final; the regrets from France’s last-four exit to Spain, their third in three years against the European champions, will linger into the American summer.
France’s no-show on Tuesday makes the sands of time run a little faster for Mbappé. It feels a cruel trick that he will be 31 when the next World Cup comes around. At his current rate, he will have made about 700 appearances by then and there are no guarantees a body of work defined by explosive power can hold up into his fourth decade. Mbappé has nothing to prove, but this tournament had seemed a natural stage for a mid-career rubber stamping of his legacy.
That may still come around in diluted form. No player has won two consecutive Golden Boots and, even when looking to the sky upon the final whistle and mopping his head with his shirt, Mbappé stood top of that ranking by virtue of having more assists than Messi. The pair were tied on eight goals.
It is not quite enough for him. His frustration was made clear in a dissection that, interpreted one way, could be regarded as a rebuke to Didier Deschamps for tactical failures.
France were outnumbered in midfield, Dani Olmo able to provide balance in a way Michael Olise could not, and Mbappé was seen only fleetingly before taking a number of pot shots in the later stages. They could not get the ball to him before that; ultimately any collective idea was sacrificed to the flailing hope that individual genius would, as so many times before, hold sway.
The angst is greater because Mbappé had hit the ground running, shaking off an anticlimactic end to the season with Real Madrid and battering through the early challenges in France’s path. The sense of unfinished business was laid bare.
“I would change Argentina 2022,” he has said when asked, if permitted, how he would rewrite the past. “That final comes to mind more than the one we won.”
The hat-trick in Lusail and subsequent defeat on penalties are a sore that refuses to heal. Facing Messi and Argentina one last time in New Jersey could have been the palimpsest for a fresh version of the story and a coronation as the world’s undisputed best.
Instead, a less glittering volume must begin. “We have to move on to the next chapter,” Mbappé said. “Because football waits for no one. We have to start over, put this failure behind us, and learn from it.”
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There is no suggestion he will call time prematurely on commitments with France. Zinedine Zidane will almost certainly succeed Deschamps and the tantalising question is whether Les Bleus’ two best players of all-time can forge a partnership that works.
Even if it passes the vibe check, Zidane has been out of the fray for five years since leaving Real. He and his captain must find a way to harness those moments of star quality while honing the kind of coherent method that has ultimately allowed Spain outstrip France convincingly.
What version of Mbappé will France find in 2030? It may depend on whether he has finally won a Champions League, with or without a European Championship title in two years’ time. It would have seemed unthinkable, when he tore a trail through Russia 2018, that a dozen years might pass without Mbappé claiming another of football’s majors.
The opportunities will keep coming, but that prospect is, if nothing else, becoming a talking point. Mbappé would be repulsed by the very notion of long-term association with near misses.
Maybe Beckham and Inter Miami will indeed tempt Mbappé one day, just as Messi was lured to a late-career role that has done no harm to his longevity for Argentina. Perhaps it would mean the World Cup tilts keep coming.
In theory, Mbappé could carry France’s hopes to Saudi Arabia 2034 and even beyond. But it did not take a huge leap, on watching his features contort with multiple agonies at Dallas Stadium, to wonder whether his clearest shot at satisfying those big ambitions has drifted away.
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