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Kylian Mbappé, the French soccer superstar, has never made a secret of his distaste for the far right. His latest warnings about its rise in France, a month before he is set to lead the men’s national team in the World Cup, have thrust him back into the treacherous scrum of sports and politics.
Speaking to Vanity Fair magazine for a profile, Mr. Mbappé said he worried about what an electoral victory for the far-right National Rally party would mean for France. With presidential elections a year away, the party’s likeliest candidates, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen, are leading all rivals in the polls.
“I know what it means, and what kind of consequences it can have for my country when those kinds of people take control,” Mr. Mbappé said in the article, with the cover line, “Liberté, Égalité, Mbappé.”
His remarks drew quick ripostes from Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Bardella, reigniting a debate, familiar across Europe, about whether soccer players should wade into politics or stick to passes and shots. “We are citizens,” Mr. Mbappé said. “We have a say, just like everyone else.”
In France, however, that debate is sharpened by the fact that this citizen is obviously not like everyone else.
A soccer phenomenon who burst out of the working-class suburbs of Paris as a teenager, Mr. Mbappé propelled France to a World Cup championship in 2018. Now 27, he is a national treasure, a talent so prized that President Emmanuel Macron pleaded with him not to forsake his club team, Paris Saint-Germain, for Real Madrid in 2022. (He did so anyway, two years later.)
Along the way, Mr. Mbappé, whose father was born in Cameroon and whose mother is of Algerian descent, became an assertive, eloquent symbol of France’s diversity. He also anchors a French national team, nicknamed Les Bleus, that holds up a multiracial, multiethnic mirror to modern France.
It is an image the far right has long struggled to accept, though its current leaders have labored to remove the taint of racism from the National Rally. In responding to Mr. Mbappé’s latest broadside, Mr. Bardella and Ms. Le Pen took a mocking tone, pointing out the triumphs of Paris Saint-Germain after he left the team. That, they said, made his criticism almost a badge of honor.
“When he says we’re not going to win the elections, it reassures me because he left PSG for Real Madrid saying it was to win the Champions League. In the meantime, PSG won,” Ms. Le Pen said to the broadcaster RTL.
Ms. Le Pen’s presidential candidacy is in doubt because of a conviction for embezzlement, which she is appealing. If she cannot run, Mr. Bardella, the party’s president, is expected to run in her stead.
“I know what happens when Kylian Mbappé leaves PSG: the club wins the Champions League! (And maybe even a second time soon),” Mr. Bardella wrote on social media, referring to the May 30 final of the European club tournament, which will pit Paris Saint-Germain against the English club Arsenal.
Other National Rally leaders raised more strenuous objections. Julien Odoul, a lawmaker, said it was wrong for Mr. Mbappé, as team captain, to divide the country. Speaking on French TV, Mr. Odoul called on the director of the French Football Federation, Philippe Diallo, to tell Mr. Mbappé to stay in his lane, which seemed unlikely.
Mr. Odoul claimed a double standard. France’s goalkeeper, Lucas Chevalier, came under a storm of criticism last year after liking an Instagram post by a right-wing politician that favored the National Rally over France Unbowed, a far-left party that has been accused of antisemitism. Mr. Chevalier said he had liked the post accidentally.
Relations between the national team and the National Rally have been strained for decades. In 1996, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s founder and Ms. Le Pen’s father, questioned the team’s French identity, saying it was “artificial to bring in players from abroad and call them the French national team.” All but one member of that team had been born in France.
In his political engagement, Mr. Mbappé is following in the footsteps of an earlier French star, Zinedine Zidane. Mr. Zidane, who is of Algerian descent, urged voters to reject the far right in elections in 2002 and 2017. Mr. Mbappé’s most notable previous statement on the subject came in 2024, when he said the gains made by the National Rally in the first round of legislative elections were “catastrophic.”
Given the political calendar, the clash of soccer and politics may be starker in France than in other European countries this coming year. Other members of the national team have also spoken out against the far right.
If anything, Mr. Mbappé’s words were more diplomatic than some of his teammates have been, according to Philippe Auclair, a soccer writer and commentator who closely follows the French team.
“He is totally in tune with the rest of the dressing room,” said Mr. Auclair, the author of a biography, “The Mbappé Project.”
