Everything can happen in Russia 2018: Who is Kylian Mbappé and what will happen to the Latin teams?
The round of 16 of the World Cup is here and two of the favorites teams to win the cup are now eliminated, while the world is amazed by Kylian Mbappé
In an exciting match between France and Argentina, Kylian Mbappé showed why he could become the world's favorite. With only 19 years, the footballer exploited the Argentine defense and scored two goals that qualified his team to the next stage of the World Cup.
According to Infobae, born in the suburbs of Paris in 1998, Mbappé has always had sport in his veins. With a football coach father at AS Bondy and a professional handball player mother, the young man started to play at the age of two and a half years.
Leer en español: Todo puede pasar en Rusia 2018: ¿Quién es Kylian Mbappé y qué pasará con las selecciones latinas?
"He was always a great fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, there were posters of him on the wall of his room, but he also followed other great players, he did not have a club in particular, he was a fan of footballers, but Ronaldo was definitely his hero" says Antonio Riccardi, coach of the sub13 team of AS Bondy.
He started at AS Bondy and entered the famous Clairefontaine Academy, which the French Football Federation reserves for the players for the greatest potential. Mbappé debuted in 2015 with AS Monaco and although great Europeans teams like Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Manchester put their eyes on him, he decided to stay at Paris Saint Germain for a figure of 220 million dollars.
According to the BBC, this is the first time that a young soccer player has scored two goals in direct elimination games in a World Cup since Pele did it in the final of the Swedish World Cup in 1958, in which he was victorious.
A world full of surprises
Now that Germany, Argentina, and Portugal, three of the favorites to win the World Cup are out of the game, we see once again that in Russia 2018 everything can happen. In fact, Juan José Toro, an amateur and great connoisseur of the sport, thinks that this year the cup can stay in Latin America.
"Brazil is a team that can easily reach the final. It is full of stars and has corrected what has been criticized for so long that it is its defense, with players like Miranda. Uruguay, for its part, has a lot of claw and balls, as we say in football. They showed it in their match against Portugal, where until the last minute they defended the ball with their lives and left in evidence the society of Suarez and Cavani that at the level of attack took the team to the quarterfinals" commented the fanatic.
Also read: They are not just soccer players! These are the athletes who have other parallel professions
Few people have faith in Mexico and Colombia to reach the final, but Toro believes that they have nothing to envy to the Europeans. "I say that Colombia can win this cup because it is a team that already feels great, already knows what adversity is and knows how to recover easily. It has talents that nobody knows and that can hurt any team. Mexico has Juan Carlos Osorio, a Colombian who is very strategist and who analyzes each team with which he will face. Osorio carefully selects players who can make life difficult for them and constantly rotates his team" he concludes.
Let's hope what other surprises this World Cup has for us and that the cup stays in Latin America.
Latin American Post | Luisa Fernanda Báez
Translated from “Todo puede pasar en Rusia 2018: Un mundial de estrellas y sorpresas”
