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why the reunion between Mbappé and the Pau coach is likely to be tense

Almost six years have passed, and one would think that time has had its effect, that the hatchet was buried. But no. The remarks made by Bruno Irles in L’Equipe, just last week, suggest that the divide is still open. “I see that there are things that I thought were turning out to be true,” whispered the Pau FC coach about Kylian Mbappé, his former colt at the AS Monaco training center. I blamed him for not to defend, to have a certain sufficiency in attitude… I am happy to see that the boy seems to realize this five years later. “

Since this exit, Pau (National) eliminated Bordeaux in the round of 16 of the Coupe de France (3-2), PSG beat Lorient (1-0), and of course, the draw decided to take us offer a Pau-PSG during the eighth, at the end of January. The opportunity for Irles and Mbappé to meet again. The opportunity for the world champion striker to see again “the man who put him on the bench among young people”.

“Many difficulties with authority, rules and discipline”

Back in 2013. Kylian Mbappé, who is about 15, has just graduated from INF Clairefontaine. Courted by many clubs (Caen, Real Madrid, Chelsea …), the young striker finally decided to join the AS Monaco training center, with a solid reputation, and immediately joined his U17 section. A team then led by a former club defender, a certain … Bruno Irles.

Bondy’s kid is already perceived as a nugget by many observers, and yet the relationship with his new coach is tightening fairly quickly. In November 2018, a documentary broadcast on M6 thus revealed an internal note to the club written at the time by Irles about the attacker. In the document in question, the trainer praises Mbappé’s technical ease, his game intelligence, his speed, his quality of dribbling, but he also tackles the weakness of his head game, his ineffectiveness, his propensity to to be moved in duels, and above all, his behavior: “A lot of difficulties with authority, rules and discipline, big lack of humility, observes the coach. He does not hurt on a ground and n “do not accept comments made about him. The lack of objectivity on the part of his relatives and himself hinders his progress.”

A crisis meeting organized by the ASM

Consequence: Irles regularly sends Mbappé with the reserve team, in the Honor division, and does not hesitate to crop it. “On the ground there were sometimes small spikes but Bruno Irles was like that with everyone, relativized a few months ago the ex-attacker of ASM Irvin Cardona in a work on the PSG player (Kylian Mbappé: Rendezvous with eternity, by Martin Leprince). He didn’t have that attitude only with Kylian, with me too it happened. ”

Nevertheless, the player turns, and the tension mounts with the Mbappé family, including papa Wilfrid, convinced that Irles makes it a personal matter. “We almost lost him (Kylian), remembered last spring a Monegasque leader in the columns of the Parisian. The coach did not trust him and he left him on the bench or even sent him to the Honor division. I remember that we had to organize an emergency meeting with the educators and the parents to dissipate the discomfort and settle the dispute. “

A crisis meeting which then makes it possible to keep Mbappé, but not necessarily to resolve the problem, nor to calm the spirits. “I was told of relentless training, I replied that a trainer should be able to sometimes jostle a player when he did not follow the instructions or when he did not make the efforts for his partners , hammered years later Bruno Irles (Mbappé: The Little Prince, by Luca Caioli and Cyril Colot). This was the case with Kylian and, as I was not allowed to send him with the amateurs (following the famous meeting, note), I had to find other ways to prick him. So yes, sometimes I would make comments like “Stop playing your star” or “Here you are not at Real Madrid so move your ass”. My only determination was to maintain my point of view and put Kylian on an equal footing with the other players. “

Group exclusion, separate training, and … passage to the U19

In short, everyone thinks they are right, no one puts water in their wine. The discomfort reaches such a level that Mbappé sometimes has to train in his corner. “I remember that Kylian was excluded from the group, so for a week I took care of him alone,” tells RMC Sport Sylvain Legwinski, also a trainer at ASM in this 2013-2014 season. think he was accused of a lack of investment at the time. The coach wanted to reframe him. With me it went very well. “

With Irles, nothing changes. In the spring of 2014, during a tournament, the U17 coach and the striker got confused in the middle of a match. It is said that in the process, Kylian’s coach and uncle, Pierre Mbappé, are on the verge of coming to blows. The divorce is definitively settled, Kylian leaves the group to go train a notch above, with the U19. “It is not that he did not want to train, I compared him rather to a gifted man in a normal class, analyzes today Legwinski. He was bored, he needed a new challenge. “

The following summer, Bruno Irles was sent a few hundred kilometers from the Principality, to coach Arles-Avignon (Ligue 2), ASM’s partner club. A sanction? A promotion? Hard to say. But this departure suits everyone. In 2016, the technician will take orders for a few months at the Sheriff Tiraspol, in Moldova, before becoming a consultant for Canal +. To bounce back in Pau, therefore, in January 2019. Mbappé, for his part, will find at the start of the 2014-2015 financial year the U17s of Monaco, then coached by Manu Dos Santos. But he will soon be outclassed with the U19s, before joining the pro group in 2015. And to plunge, definitively, into the deep end.


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