\n<\/p>\n
Playing against Bondy’s best was no mean feat given the tally of professional footballers among their alumni – which includes Arsenal defender William Saliba – is in double figures.<\/p>\n
Project Mbappe didn’t stop there.<\/p>\n
While a teenage Mbappe pinned up pictures of Ronaldo and watched old footage of Zinedine Zidane, another Real Madrid superstar, there was a third role model far closer to home – Jires Kembo Ekoko, his adopted brother.<\/p>\n
Ekoko was taken in by Mbappe’s parents when he was nine and was selected for the French Federation’s national academy at Clairefontaine before playing professionally for Rennes in Ligue 1.<\/p>\n
Ekoko was more than a decade older than Mbappe but had a big impact. <\/p>\n
At the age of six, Mbappe had learned the French national anthem, explaining to his teacher that “one day, I’ll play in the World Cup for France”.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t only Wilfried and Fayza who believed Mbappe was destined for big things.<\/p>\n
Nike came calling with free shoes when he was just 10. A little over six years later, he made his first-team debut for Monaco. But the progress between those two points was not smooth.<\/p>\n
Allan Momege was a classmate of Mbappe at Clairefontaine.<\/p>\n
“At the time I met him, he wasn’t the player who impressed me the most,” Momege says of Mbappe in the BBC Sport documentary.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t stand out for me as a player during the trials. The first time I saw him play, I didn’t think, ‘Wow!’<\/p>\n
“There were regional selections and Kylian wasn’t in the best team.”<\/p>\n
Matt Spiro, an author and French football expert, echoes Momege.<\/p>\n
“Kylian initially found it a bit difficult at Clairefontaine,” he says. “He was there for two years and during the first year, he certainly wasn’t the best in his group. I think even Kylian would admit that.<\/p>\n
“Mbappe would play out on the wing and would quite frequently be in a sulky mood. He had a growth spurt, I think towards the end of his first year in Clairefontaine, and by the second year, he was really starting to look the business. <\/p>\n
“Then people were thinking, we’ve got a very, very special talent on our hands.”<\/p>\n
That talent was picked up by Monaco scouts in July 2013, when he was aged 14.<\/p>\n
Moving from the Parisian suburbs to the wealthy, sunny Cote d’Azur at such a young age could have made others go inside themselves.<\/p>\n
Not the boy from Bondy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n