Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella hit at the Real Madrid superstar’s performances on the pitch ahead of the World Cup.
PARIS — It’s all kicking off between the French far right and the country’s biggest football star.
A day after top striker Kylian Mbappé defended his decision to wade into the messy world of French politics in a Vanity Fair profile, the far-right National Rally leaders Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen trolled Les Bleus’ captain on social media.
Le Pen and Bardella, both front-runners for next year’s presidential election, were quick to note that the year after Mbappé’s acrimonious departure from Paris Saint-Germain in 2024, the club won the UEFA Champions League — European club football’s most prestigious trophy — for the first time in its history and could do so again after qualifying for the final this year.
“I know what happens when Kylian Mbappé leaves PSG: the club wins the Champions League! (And maybe even a second time soon.)” Bardella wrote on X.
“He left PSG to join Real Madrid, saying it was to win the Champions League. In the meantime, PSG won it,” Le Pen said in an interview with French radio RTL on Wednesday.
Le Pen and Bardella’s party has long had a contentious relationship with the country’s popular national football team.
Far-right leaders have provoked consternation in the past by criticizing the racial makeup of the team, insinuating they are less French. In 1996, National Rally founder Jean-Marie Le Pen said that “it’s artificial to bring in players from abroad and call them the French national team.”
Mbappé’s current club team, Spanish giant Real Madrid, dominated the Champions League for most of the past decade but has suffered through two uninspired seasons since the Frenchman’s arrival.
The pressure is once again on the 27-year-old star as he captains the French team in this summer’s FIFA World Cup, hosted by Canada, Mexico and the U.S., as Les Bleus are considered favorites. In his interview with Vanity Fair ahead of the tournament, Mbappé defended his previous comments urging people to “vote against extremists that want to divide the country” ahead of snap elections in 2024.
At the time, PSG star Ousmane Dembélé also urged voters to mobilize against the National Rally, calling its strong election results “alarming.” Forward Marcus Thuram said it was necessary to fight the National Rally as well.
“We are citizens, and we couldn’t just sit there and tell ourselves everything is going to be fine and go play. We truly try to fight this idea that a footballer should shut up and play,” Mbappé told Vanity Fair, echoing the now-infamous comments U.S. conservative commentator Laura Ingraham made about NBA star LeBron James.
“I know what it means, and what kind of consequences it can have for [this] country when those kinds of people take control,” said Mbappé.
Many players on the current team are children of immigrants from France’s former African colonies or were themselves born abroad. Mbappé’s father was born in Cameroon and his mother is of Algerian descent.
But as Marine Le Pen has worked to develop her party as a mainstream political force, she and many of her lieutenants have avoided targeting Les Bleus, especially as the national team has enjoyed sustained success over the past decade, including winning the World Cup in 2018 and reaching the final in 2022.
Bardella even called Mbappé a “model of assimilation” in 2022.