By Alfredo Echenique Lugo
04 Jul 2024, 15:42 PM EDT
On June 17, the French national team made its debut in the European Championship against Austria. They won a match by a score of 1-0 to earn their first three points of the tournament and which would allow them to advance to the round of 16 of the competition.
However, that debut had a bittersweet taste for France as its star player, Kylian Mbappé, suffered a fractured nose towards the end of the match and this prevented him from playing the following match against the Netherlands.
Since then, Mbappé has started wearing a face mask, something quite common for footballers who suffer from this type of injury and which they use to avoid any blow that could worsen the injury.
However, this extra accessory on Mbappé’s face seems to have him in a bad mood. He recently commented that he finds it quite uncomfortable to wear it.
“Absolute horror,” Mbappé described the experience of using this face mask to protect him from his broken nose.
“It’s horrible to play with a mask. I keep changing masks because every time there’s something that bothers me, something that’s not quite right, I try to change it,” Mbappé himself explained in a press conference before the match against Portugal in the quarter-finals of the European Championship.
“It limits your vision and then there is the sweat, you have to let it out. But I can’t play without the mask. I hate it, it’s so annoying. I’ve changed it five times already,” said the young striker.
“Frankly, I know what I was getting into when I decided not to have the operation. It is a new situation and this can cause me to get knocks and the pain to persist. I will try to give everything to take France to the top. The nose is not the most important thing,” he said.
Even France’s own coach, Didier Deschamps, commented on how he has seen the interference of this mask in the game of the now Real Madrid player. “Everything in front of him is fine, but there is something missing in his peripheral vision,” analyzed the strategist.
France will play Portugal this Friday in the quarter-finals of Euro 2024. As for Mbappé, he will have to continue wearing this mask until he undergoes an operation, which will take place once the tournament is over, as he does not want to miss the cup with his national team.
Keep reading:
· Here’s how the top scorers are in Euro 2024
· Néstor Pékerman also responds to Mbappé: “He is hurt because we took away a World Cup from him”
· France’s coaching staff explain Antoine Griezmann’s new role on the pitch