The refusal to call up Kylian Mbappé made a lot of noise in France, with the player preferring to stay in Madrid. The striker and captain of Les Bleus has been heavily criticized by Mathieu Valbuena than to the microphones of RMC Sports commented:
“Being captain is not just a piece of cloth around your arm, it also means having responsibilities on and off the pitch. And I think it would have been important for him to have been there for those games, even if he knew he was tired. He could have been there for the group, that is also the captain. He is also part of the French national team, he could have been there and his decision is rather strange.
What surprises fans of the French national team is the fact that he is not in the selection and that he will play this weekend against Villarreal. Mbappé’s priority, I find, is not the French national team but Real Madrid. He arrives at a new club, he knows that he has everything to prove and that it is not easy to do so there. I think he’s putting everything he can into it… We saw his last outings with France, he wasn’t a great Mbappé, even in the way he played, we had the impression that he wasn’t there.”