The Future of Soccer Is Running at Kylian Mbappé’s Pace
The past decade of world soccer was dictated by short passing and slow buildups. At the 2018 World Cup, a lightning-quick French teenager gave fans a blueprint for the game’s next phase.The Future of Soccer Is Running at Kylian Mbappé’s Pace
The past decade of world soccer was dictated by short passing and slow buildups. At the 2018 World Cup, a lightning-quick French teenager gave fans a blueprint for the game’s next phase.
There was a moment in this summer’s World Cup when I questioned my eyesight. Broadly speaking, human vision is remarkable. We can see in three dimensions, both near and far, whether we’re staring or just merely glancing. The speed at which items become invisible to the human eye is something like 38,000 miles per hour—which is to say that short of attempting to eyeball a particle of light, nothing should be fast enough to escape our view. In the opening minutes of France’s round of 16 match with Argentina, Kylian Mbappé attempted to challenge that notion.
About 11 minutes into the game, he collected a loose ball near the center of the pitch and darted past five Argentine defenders before being ripped down in the box to earn a French penalty. A few moments later, he received a pass from Paul Pogba and, in similar fashion, sprinted by helpless opponents before his run was ended by another foul. Each movement was a demonstration of speed; at 19, Mbappé was the youngest man on the pitch, and also the quickest.
One week earlier, against Peru in the group stage, he became the youngest goal scorer in French World Cup history. Against Argentina, he scored twice, first by weaving through a pileup in the box to slide home a go-ahead goal and then by collecting another pass on the break minutes later for the insurance tally in a 4-3 French victory. The pair of goals made him the youngest footballer since Pelé in 1958 to score more than once in a World Cup knockout game. He earned wide praise for his performance and was rightfully named the tournament’s Best Young Player. It wasn’t just that he so thoroughly decimated world-class opponents but the way in which he did so.
For a decade, soccer has been stylistically defined by patience in passing: the tiki-taka, death-by-a-million-cuts strategies that allowed players to wear down central defenders and lull opponents into a false sense of security before seizing on missteps to deftly guide the ball into the net, capping sequences of perfectly choreographed beauty. The practice, shepherded by Pep Guardiola and his disciples at Barcelona, was used by an array of teams to win a handful of Champions League trophies, two European Championships, and two World Cups. The archetypes of the model—midfield maestros like Andrés Iniesta and Xavi—gained great fame and accolades, as did successors like Sergio Busquets and Thiago.
Mbappé’s accomplishments haven’t come from a landscape dominated by thousands of passes and slow buildups. Deft as his touches are, he’s Ricky Bobby in a field of lesser racers: He wants to go fast. And he does. Watch him on this opening run against Argentina. Look how, even when saddled with keeping possession of a rolling ball, he outpaces each and every opponent who tries to chase him down.
In retrospect, it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did to recognize that the calendar would be dominated by a teenager from Paris. The World Cup was a coming-out party, but Kylian Mbappé is not an unknown. He did not appear from the far reaches of the bench, for club or for country, to shock the world with his surprising gifts. He’s been here for a while, since a breakout season with Monaco in 2016-17 led to one of the richest transfers in history when he was shipped to Paris Saint-Germain for a cool £121.5 million. In his first season at Parc des Princes, while still a teen, he scored 13 goals and added nine assists, finishing third in expected goals plus expected assists per 90 minutes behind teammates Neymar and Edinson Cavani. This year—20 years old as of December 20 and still somehow not yet entering his prime—he leads Ligue 1 in goals and is second to only Neymar in xG + xA. He is, by all definitions of the word, a superstar. But more than that, he’s the best picture the sport has of its future.
Reliance on a counterattack isn’t a new strategy. At its core, it’s a simple tactic: Wait for your opponent to make a mistake and then pounce. The scheme has always been effective, but for much of the past decade, it’s been executed most prominently by less-talented squads on the global stage, while the elite teams played the beautiful game. In 2004, Greece performed a version of it by sitting back on defense and allowing teams to flail at their parked bus before they found an opening. They stole enough goals to win the European Championship. At the 2014 World Cup, Costa Rica topped a group with Italy, England, and Uruguay thanks to a steady dose of counterattacking before bowing out on penalties in the quarterfinal round. But their version, too, wasn’t quite the one that’s gained popularity.
Today, with the emergence of fullbacks as secondary wing attackers, teams relying on the counter have been able to evolve the strategy from one used primarily as a defensive tactic to much more of an attacking one. Three of the four semifinalists in Russia relied on transitional play to generate goals. France used Mbappé and Paul Pogba to flip the field on opponents en route to a World Cup victory. Croatia countered up the wings and reached the final before falling. And before Belgium exited the tournament in the semifinals against France, they put together the most complete counterattacking run of any team this year.
Unlike their predecessors, though, France’s tactics were less “pure counterattacking” and more “winning without dominating the ball.” In years past, obliterating an opponent meant allowing them as few touches as possible and hoarding possession. Les Bleus flipped that script, holding more of the ball in just three of their seven World Cup games, but going undefeated on their way to a championship.
In a way, it makes sense that the World Cup marked this global transition. National teams rarely practice or play together, stringing together a handful of gatherings per year into hopeful cohesion in the pitch. Precise, quick-touch, short passing requires an extraordinary amount of skill—ask Saudi Arabia what happens when you attempt it with what amounts to a JV team playing varsity squads—and a similarly impressive level of trust and understanding between manager and squad, as well as between defenders, creators, and strikers. Spain and Germany, the previous two world champions, were supremely talented, sure, but they also saw the majority of their rosters piped in from the two best clubs in their respective countries. Twelve of 23 representatives from Spain’s 2010 title came from Barcelona (under Guardiola) or Real Madrid. Eleven members of Germany’s 2014 team played domestically at Bayern Munich (also under Guardiola) or Borussia Dortmund. And so the eventual cup holders could implement tactics that required perfect communication between their field players because rather than attempting to marry 11 individuals intellectually, they had to link two already cohesive groups.
The same couldn’t be said of Spain and Germany this year. Spain saw their quest for a second title in three tries hindered before the tournament began when days before their opening match, manager Julen Lopetegui was unceremoniously sacked after word leaked he’d been hired to oversee Real Madrid. Their summer ended a few weeks later when they tiki-taka’d their way out of Russia, out-passing the hosts by a whopping 1,008-192, but never creating any real chances. Spain still moved the ball, but without purpose, and without a singular vision. With Germany eliminated in the group stage, fatally divided by the “bling-bling gang” and the Bavarians, La Roja’s exit in the round of 16 also marked the loosening of tiki-taka’s vice grip on the strategic hierarchy.
The seeds of the transition are evident throughout Europe’s top leagues. Soccer, like most sports, is getting bigger, faster, and stronger. And more importantly, more aggressive. Almost all of the most watchable and most successful teams on the continent have recorded above-average PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) numbers this season. The metric measures how quickly a team allows opponents to circulate possession before attempting to win the ball back. Essentially, it’s a method used to calculate how aggressive a team is without the ball. Last season, Guardiola’s record-setting Manchester City squad led the Premier League in total passes per match by a wide margin, but also topped Europe in PPDA. And their toughest competitors for the crown this season, Liverpool, may be the single strongest example of the success of transitional play at the club level.
As my former colleague Ryan O’Hanlon wrote on the eve of the Reds’ Champions League final appearance in May, Jürgen Klopp’s signature Gegenpressing tactic “creates offense through attackers and midfielders that swarm the opposition as soon as they lose possession.” The strategy unlocked Liverpool’s hydra of attacking talents, headlined by Mohamed Salah and supplemented by Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino. The strategy is, as Klopp has suggested, a playmaker in and of itself, as his squad are constantly in motion, and can break up the pitch at will.
In practice, his claim is true. In 2017-18, Salah set the Premier League record for goals in a 38-week season—almost all of which came from open play. Mané added 10 domestic goals and 10 more in the Champions League, while Firmino threw in 15 and 10 of his own. Manchester City scored more goals than any team in England’s history, broke triple-digit points, and wrapped up the title sometime around Christmas. And still, the only chance any team had of breaking them was through the press.
The new blueprint for success is clear: Play in transition, and the points will come. Some of the best teams have already learned it. Paris Saint-Germain, the team that employs Mbappé on the wing, is third best in Europe in PPDA, second in watchability and has a 13-point cushion atop the French table. Liverpool is atop the Premier League table. And across the sport, the most exciting players are the ones who play fast and on the break. That isn’t to say tiki-taka is dead. Barcelona still leads La Liga in passes per game and is a good bet to win their fourth title in five years and their eighth in 11 years. But their grip on the global aesthetic is slipping.
This was the year of Kylian Mbappé and his brand of play. Of explosive runs up the wing, quick-strike scoring, and the honest-to-God beauty of watching a perfectly executed counterattack. 2019 may see a reversal of form. Maybe a new generation of 5-foot-8 central midfielders with glacial pace and beautiful touch are rounding out their time in the academies as we speak. But more likely than not, the speed revolution will continue, with Ousmane Dembélé and Jadon Sancho making waves across Europe and Mbappé, only 20, still improving weekly. As he grows, both in skill and in stature, he’ll carry the next stylistic era of the sport on his shoulders. With each blistering run, he cements transitional play as the defining tactic of the coming years. And if that trend continues, 2018 won’t be the only time Mbappé finishes on top.