The home side win possession midway inside the opposition half, and suddenly the slender youngster in the bright orange boots is charging down the middle of the pitch towards goal.
As he enters the penalty area and sees the ball has been rolled towards him from the left, he shortens his long-limbed stride, before bobbling a first-time shot down the centre of the goal with his left foot, sending the goalkeeper the wrong way.
He wheels away, arms spread wide in celebration, and races towards the touchline before turning back to take his team-mates’ acclaim. Pulling free from their embraces, he spots his family in the stands and responds by breaking into a version of the arm-wiggling celebratory dance once popularised by Liverpool and England striker Daniel Sturridge.
He is just 17 years old, and the red-and-white No 33 shirt he is wearing does not even bear his name on the back. But, very soon, everyone will know who he is.
It is February 2016. Monaco are now 3-1 up in a Ligue 1 game against Troyes. And Kylian Mbappe has just scored the very first goal of his senior career.
Nearly 10 years — and 411 career goals — later, now France national-team captain Mbappe will cross swords with his formative club again tonight (Tuesday) when Real Madrid welcome Monaco to the Bernabeu in the Champions League.
Mention of Mbappe and Monaco inevitably brings to mind memories of the dazzling manner in which the then-teenage forward exploded onto the scene during the 2016-17 season, inspiring the principality club to a spectacular league title triumph and earning himself a €180million ($209m; £156m at current exchange rates) transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in the process. It remains the second-highest transfer fee ever paid.
But for all the nostalgia the reunion will inspire, it should not be forgotten that when Mbappe was learning the ropes beside the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean, it was not all plain sailing.
When a 14-year-old Mbappe graduated from France’s feted Clairefontaine youth academy in the summer of 2013, he was a boy in demand.
By that age, he had already been given a guided tour of the facilities at Chelsea and been introduced to his idols Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo during a visit to Real Madrid. But despite sustained interest from both clubs, along with PSG, Bordeaux, Lens and Caen in France, he and his family chose to place their faith in the highly regarded academy at Monaco.
His father, Wilfrid, took a year’s sabbatical and rented an apartment in Monaco to help his son settle in. By the time Mbappe first pulled on a Monaco shirt, he had already signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Nike.
Mbappe was immediately promoted to the under-17s, where he found himself being coached by former Monaco centre-back Bruno Irles. To say the pair did not see eye to eye would be something of an understatement.
Although Irles had no trouble establishing that Mbappe possessed electrifying talent and potential, he also felt aspects of his personality were problematic.
“Lots of difficulties with authority, rules and discipline (and) a huge lack of humility,” Irles wrote in an internal assessment of Mbappe, revealed in a documentary broadcast by French TV channel M6 in 2018.
“He doesn’t push himself on the pitch, and he doesn’t accept criticism. The lack of objectivity from those close to him, and from himself, are holding back his development.”
Frustrated by what he saw as Mbappe’s refusal to knuckle down, Irles regularly left him on the bench and sometimes omitted him from his squad altogether, which left the youngster with no option but to turn out for Monaco’s second-string under-17 team in France’s notoriously rough-edged Division d’Honneur.
Mbappe playing for Monaco Under-19s in May 2016 (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
Mbappe’s parents were furious, and the club had to hastily convene a meeting between them and Mbappe’s coaches to prevent their precious protege from flying the nest. The tensions with Irles nevertheless remained and, in spring 2014, the striker was moved up to the under-19s.
Irles left Monaco at the end of the season, dispatched to take the reins at partner club Arles-Avignon in second-tier Ligue 2. Mbappe returned to Monaco’s under-17s squad the following season, although he quickly found himself back with the under-19s.
“We were worried at one point because the family weren’t too happy with how things were going,” former Monaco Under-19s coach Frederic Barilaro confessed in the M6 documentary. “So we moved him up to the next age group. He might have felt more comfortable there, because the under-17s wasn’t enough for him. He was better than everyone else, quite simply. There was no competition.”
The doors to the first-team squad finally opened to Mbappe in November 2015, when he was drafted in to make up the numbers at training one day during an international break. It did not take him long to make an impression.
“The impact he had in training was enormous, even in the first session,” former Monaco assistant coach Nelson Caldeira tells The Athletic. “At the end of the session, the older players all came to me and said, ‘Nelson, this guy is fantastic, he’s different’. Of course, everybody understood his quality.
“Sometimes, when young players come up to the senior squad, they struggle with the pace and the rhythm of the small-sided games. The image I have of Kylian is of a player who was permanently in the zone. Some players would get into the zone on occasion. It felt like Kylian was there all the time. I felt that the first time I saw him.
“It was the little details: how he orientated his control, how he orientated his body. It was fantastic. He’s not Brazilian, of course, but he reminded me of a Brazilian-style street footballer. That kind of ginga (sway), as we say in Portuguese. He had that since the beginning.”
Monaco head coach Leonardo Jardim was scouting in Argentina at the time, so Caldeira called him that same afternoon to tell him about Mbappe.
“I told Leonardo that this player was different,” says Caldeira. “He said, ‘OK, keep calm. We’ll have a look at him in the next few days’.”
Within a month, Mbappe had made his senior debut, coming on as an 88th-minute substitute for Fabio Coentrao in a 1-1 draw at home to Caen. Aged just 16 years and 347 days, he became Monaco’s youngest-ever player, breaking a record set by Thierry Henry in 1994.
He supplanted Henry’s name in the club’s record books again with his goal against Troyes in February 2016, which made him Monaco’s youngest first-team scorer. The following month, he signed his first professional contract.
The then 17-year-old Mbappe celebrates becoming Monaco’s youngest-ever scorer in February 2016 (Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images)
After a run of eight successive Ligue 1 appearances, Mbappe returned to the service of Monaco’s under-19s, scoring twice as they beat their Lens counterparts 3-0 to win the Coupe Gambardella — France’s historic youth tournament — at the Stade de France in Paris.
He gave an early demonstration of his composure in front of the cameras during an awkward pre-match interview with veteran TV journalist Daniel Lauclair, who first confused him for Lens’ English centre-back Taylor Moore and then asked if he was proud to be flying the flag for the Lens academy. Mbappe politely corrected him in both instances, and then cheerfully cracked on with the interview.
The teenager brought the curtain down on his maiden professional season by playing a starring role as France lifted the Under-19 European Championship trophy in Germany. Yet, just as all the lights appeared to have turned green, Mbappe found himself stuck in traffic once again.
Mbappe started Monaco’s opening league fixture of the season at home to Guingamp in August 2016, but had to be carried off with his neck in a brace in the 41st minute following a clash of heads with opposition centre-back Christophe Kerbrat. The concussion protocols put in place by Monaco’s medical staff, who proceeded with extreme caution due to Mbappe’s tender age, kept him on the sidelines for close to a month.
By the time he returned to action in mid-September, Monaco were flying high at the top of Ligue 1. With Colombia superstar Radamel Falcao, crafty French forward Valere Germain and promising Argentine striker Guido Carrillo all above him in the pecking order, Mbappe had to bide his time on the bench. And his family were not happy about it.
After Mbappe only made it on for the final eight minutes of a 7-0 rout of Metz in early October, his father gave a strongly worded interview to leading French newspaper L’Equipe in which he complained about his son’s treatment.
“We don’t understand the unclear way Kylian is being managed, with regard to the club’s promises that he would play,” Mbappe senior said.
“The situation doesn’t make Kylian happy. He needs to play at his age, and there will be some serious thinking to do during the winter transfer window.”
As if by magic, Mbappe started up front alongside Falcao in Monaco’s next league game and responded with a goal and a pair of assists in a 6-2 demolition of Montpellier. But figures who worked at the club at the time point to Mbappe’s astonishing second half of the season as proof that Jardim was right to ease him back into action gently following that head injury.
“At the time, we weren’t used to a young player flying through the ranks at such speed,” says a Monaco source, speaking anonymously to protect relationships.
“There was a desire from the club and the staff for him not to jump the gun and go too quickly. What he achieved that season showed that the club and the staff managed his development very well. Because as soon as he started playing, he became a first-team regular and he played every game.”
Mbappe continued to bounce between the starting XI and the bench over the weeks that followed, netting his first career hat-trick in a 7-0 trouncing of Rennes in the Coupe de la Ligue. But come the February, a year on from his first senior goal against Troyes, it had become clear that if Monaco were fielding their strongest starting line-up, their No 29 had to be in it.
After scoring in a 2-1 win at Montpellier and netting another hat-trick, this time against Metz, Mbappe produced the performance that truly made the world sit up and take notice when he broke through to score in clinical fashion in Monaco’s 5-3 defeat at Manchester City in the first leg of a Champions League round of 16 tie. A fine strike in his side’s 3-1 win in the return fixture, which sent Monaco through on the since-scrapped away-goals rule, proved he could be held back no longer.
Sum up this game in one word…
📅 #OTD in 2017, Manchester City 5-3 Monaco 🤯
⏰⚽️2⃣6⃣ Sterling
⏰⚽️3⃣2⃣ Falcao
⏰⚽️4⃣0⃣ Mbappé
⏰⚽️5⃣8⃣ Agüero
⏰⚽️6⃣1⃣ Falcao
⏰⚽️7⃣1⃣ Agüero
⏰⚽️7⃣7⃣ Stones
⏰⚽️8⃣2⃣ Sané@ManCity | #UCL pic.twitter.com/O5bgC8rQOA— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) February 21, 2021
Germain paid the price for Mbappe’s emergence — it abruptly cost him his status as Falcao’s first-choice strike partner. But, although it pained him at the time, the now 35-year-old’s disappointment has not lingered.
“Everyone was delighted, because when a player is shining and scoring so many goals, you’re pleased for them — even more so when it’s a youngster,” he tells The Athletic.
“I can’t hide that, for me, it was a bit frustrating to find myself not playing as much over the last few months of the season because I’d played the whole season up to then. But, with hindsight, I understood that the coach had made the right choice.
“He was so good that he had to play. Over the last three months of the season, he scored in almost every game.”
Mbappe’s performances showed a disarming level of maturity for such a young player, and it was a similar story off the pitch.
“He was accessible, attentive, intelligent and curious,” says the Monaco source. “But there was no naivety to him. He knew where he wanted to go and he was very focused on his objectives.”
Another aspect of the youngster’s character that stood out was his competitiveness. From shooting exercises in training to furiously-contested table tennis matches against team-mates, if Mbappe was involved in any athletic endeavour, he was in it to win it.
“He was very competitive,” says Germain. “But even after a poor result — not that we had many — he’d always have a big smile on his face in training. He was sure of himself and sure of where he wanted to go.
“Everything seemed easy for him. We used to ask ourselves: ‘Who’s this young guy who finds everything so easy and who has so much confidence?’ Generally, when a young player arrives like that, it takes a bit of time for them to feel fully integrated in the changing room. But for him, it was very quick.”
Mbappe scored a further eight goals in Ligue 1 as his side streaked to the title ahead of PSG, who had won the previous four and seven of the eight since, and he continued to produce moments of magic in the Champions League, scoring three goals over two legs against Borussia Dortmund in the quarter-finals and netting the only goal of a 4-1 aggregate defeat by Juventus in the next round.
The now-Real Madrid star celebrates scoring against Borussia Dortmund in April 2017 (Xavier Laine/Getty Images )
He finished the season — his first full year at senior level — with remarkable figures of 26 goals and 14 assists in all competitions. Rarely in the recent history of the European game has stardom beckoned quite so brazenly for a young player.
For a long time the following summer, it seemed that Mbappe would remain at Stade Louis II for another season, but PSG’s €180million offer — a world record for a teenager that still stands — proved impossible for Monaco to turn down.
Although it is eight and a half years since Mbappe left the principality, it is a place to which he has often returned.
Despite still being a PSG player, he spent time working on his fitness at Monaco’s La Turbie training centre in the summer of 2022, in sessions led by his father and in which his younger brother, Ethan (now playing for Lille), and older adoptive brother, Jires Kembo Ekoko, also took part.
There was a stark demonstration of the extent to which Stade Louis II continues to feel like home for him in March 2024, shortly after news had broken of his impending departure to Madrid.
After being controversially subbed off by PSG head coach Luis Enrique at half-time of a league match at Monaco, the France captain elected to watch the second half of the game in the stands with his mother, Fayza Lamari, rather than in the dugout with his team-mates — even posing for selfies with home fans as he made his way to his seat.
“I still live in Monaco, and we’ve bumped into each other at restaurants a couple of times,” says Germain. “He was only there for four years, but although his story with Monaco was short, it was intense. I know he’s got a strong connection to Monaco because he comes back regularly. He’s still attached to Monaco and to the club, and it’ll give him great pleasure to play against them again.”
Mbappe was asked about his time at Monaco during Madrid’s pre-match press conference on Monday.
“It was magnificent,” the now 27-year-old said. “I was able to fulfil many dreams, although I still have many more to fulfil. As I’ve always said, I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for Monaco. They gave me so much to help me fulfil my dream of becoming a professional player, and I won’t forget that.”
Mbappe’s exceptional talent will surely take him to some extraordinary destinations over the rest of his career, but, wherever he goes and whatever else he achieves, Monaco will always be the place it all began.