Jean-Pierre Papin went on France T\u00e9l\u00e9visions on Monday and put words on what bothers him in Kylian Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or campaign. The 1991 winner started with praise, as reported by RMC Sport and Foot Mercato: \u201cKylian, I like him a lot, he is a man of records.\u201d Then the reproach: \u201cBut at some point, it is \u2018me, me, me and me\u2019. You become Ballon d\u2019Or, you cannot keep saying you want to. The others decide. In his communication, at some point, it was: \u2018Nobody but me deserves the Ballon d\u2019Or\u2019. It was too much for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 worked the airwaves in the days before the vote closed. On RFI, he summed up his season: \u201cI was top scorer in all the biggest competitions and I think it can be a good year for me, and I can feel it.\u201d The numbers back him: 25 goals in La Liga and 15 in the Champions League, top scorer in both competitions; 22 goals across three World Cups, the all-time record in the tournament. RMC notes what the file lacks: no major trophy sits beside those numbers.<\/p>\n
Papin aims at the message more than the season. \u201cToday, when you look at how the Ballon d\u2019Or is awarded, there is a whole set of criteria and that one does not go Kylian\u2019s way. The rest is all fine,\u201d he added. His own tip wears another shirt: \u201cHarry Kane, there is nothing going wrong for him today.\u201d He would not hand the trophy to Mbapp\u00e9 \u201cbecause of the communication\u201d. RMC lists Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, Yamal, Kane and Mbapp\u00e9 among the contenders, with no clear favourite.<\/p>\n
The 70th Ballon d\u2019Or will be awarded on 26 October in London by a jury of journalists from the top 100 Fifa nations, and the votes are already in: Papin\u2019s words will not shift the count. They set the tone of the public debate until the envelope is opened. No reaction has come from Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s camp, and none of the four outlets reporting the remarks mentions one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jean-Pierre Papin, the 1991 winner, calls Kylian Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or campaign too much, thirteen days before a ceremony whose votes are already closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image-id":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image-id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ba_sport":[],"class_list":["post-8054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n