“We must prioritize the interests of the player without putting him in difficulty” vis-à-vis his club, explained Didier Deschamps on Monday to justify the absence of Kylian Mbappé from the France team for the October matches while he played for Real Madrid.
“The initial postulate is that the interests of the clubs and the interests of the national teams necessarily diverge at some point, and we must not forget that the employer is the club, not the federation,” explained the coach on the website of the French Football Federation (FFF).
“He is not going to go against his club”
“The most important thing is the interest of the player, I know very well that he is not going to go against his club, he does not want to go against the selection either,” explained Deschamps, who, “after discussion”, preferred to “prioritize the interests of the player without putting him in difficulty”.
Not selected among the 23 players for the Nations League matches against Israel on Thursday and Belgium on October 14, Mbappé had however played with Real for half an hour the day before the list was published and played again 70 minutes on Saturday.
Deschamps does not want to “make a big deal out of Kylian”. Even if he knows that the Blues star “crystallizes a lot of things about him, we have to see that in a more general way”, for all the players. “And this is valid for all clubs,” continued the coach. They have always been resistant to the player being able to go to the selection and take risks. I’m not here to take risks. »
