French professional footballer Kylian Mbappe is widely known as one of the best players in the world. His talent has earned him titles and enormous wealth. No doubt that Kylian Mbappe’s salary — which makes the biggest contribution to his net worth — is so incredibly high that analysts estimate he is set to be the richest-paid athlete very soon.
However, money and club plaudits aside, what perhaps makes the French professional soccer player more special is that he too is already a FIFA World Cup winner — a coveted distinction that has eluded some of the greatest players in the footballing history such as Portuguese icon Cristiano Ronaldo.
Mbappe is a prolific footballer who can easily outrun and outclass defenders with his speed and dribbling. Add to that his perfection at landing the ball at the back of the net and Mbappe has made him a key forward for his club as well as his national squad.
Mbappe was just short of his 17th birthday when he made his senior club debut for Ligue 1 club Monaco on 2 December 2015. He came in as a substitute for just two minutes in a match against Caen. In less than a year since making his senior debut, Mbappe broke a few records held by Thierry Henry — the French footballing great to whom he was compared since his junior days.
Highly sought after by top-flight European clubs, Mbappe stayed on with Monaco till the end of the 2017 season and helped the club win the Ligue 1 title.
PSG signed the then-18-year-old Mbappe initially on a one-year loan from Monaco in August 2017 to stay within UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. The following season, PSG took Mbappe permanently for a record transfer fee of around USD 190 million, plus bonuses. Mbappe, thus, set the record for the highest transfer fee ever paid for a teenager and the second-highest in the history of football behind Brazilian star and once-fellow PSG comrade, Neymar Jr.
Mbappe’s rapid rise of to the top of the game has come on the back of his exceptional goal-scoring ability and his equally skilled assists, which have helped his teammates at Monaco, PSG and the French national team in scoring goals.
In fact, Mbappe’s 15 goals in his final season with Monaco when the club lifted Ligue 1 came in just 1501 minutes and also recorded eight assists. Numerically, Mbappe was involved in a league goal every 65 minutes. According to Sky Sports, no other player in France could reach double figures in such a short time.
Mbappe is a five-time Ligue 1 champion, three-time French Cup winner, two-time French League Cup winner and three-time French Super Cup champion. He has also been Ligue 1’s top scorer for four consecutive seasons.
Playing for the France national team, he scored four goals at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. In the process, he became the youngest French goalscorer in World Cup history, the second teenager to score two goals in a World Cup match after Pele, and the second teenager after Pele to score in a World Cup final match. He was, therefore, named the winner of FIFA World Cup Best Young Player and won the French Player of the Year Award.
Four years later, the Frenchman arrived at Qatar to help his side defend the World Cup title. With eight goals to his name, Mbappe won the Golden Boot award for being the top goalscorer of the tournament. However, his dream of winning a second World Cup trophy remained unfulfilled as the Lionel Messi-led Argentine side defeated France in the title clash.
The French wonderkid ranks third in the top 10 of Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid athletes in 2023. According to the publication’s list, which was topped by Cristiano Ronaldo, Mbappe’s total earnings stand at a whopping USD 120 million.
Kylian Mbappe’s salary and bonuses on-field amounted to USD 100 million of the total for the period considered by Forbes for the study. The rest was made up of endorsements amounting to USD 20 million.
In February 2024, French newspaper Le Parisien reported that the talismanic marksman will be joining La Liga outfit Real Madrid at the end of the 2023-24 club football season. According to a few sources, the Spanish side will offer him a salary less than USD 430,000 per week. However, he is likely to receive a signing bonus of USD 108 million (approximately) from the Madrid-based club. In addition, he will also be allowed to retain 60 percent of his image rights.
Mbappe endorses several multinational brands such as Nike, Hublot, Panini, Oakley and Dior. In mid-2022, Mbappe reappeared on the cover of the acclaimed FIFA video game by EA Sports for the third year in a row. He is also an investor and ambassador of the fantasy NFT platform, Sorare.
A Forbes report suggests that he has also founded his own production company named Zebra Valley.
His present salary at PSG (USD 77.6 million per annum) is enough to get him the fastest and most luxurious wheels on the road, palatial mansions across France and beyond, private jets that can fly him anywhere, and superyachts of the grandest size. Yet Kylian Mbappe is known to be a very private person and doesn’t usually reveal more about his personal life or flaunt his immense net worth on social media. Information about his personal properties, if any, is unclear.
According to Goal.com, the footballer owns a Ferrari 488 Pista, worth around USD 550,000 — a price that is certainly high but easily affordable with Kylian Mbappe’s salary.
The 488 Pista is perhaps the best known among all the cars the PSG forward has. According to Ferrari, the car has the “most powerful V8 engine in the Maranello marque’s history” and the “highest level yet of technological transfer from racing.”
The car can go 0-100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and reach a top speed of 340 km/h.
The Mercedes-Benz V Class is a large-size van capable of seating seven. It is 5.37 metres long, 1.92 metres wide, and has a height of 1.88 metres. The car delivers a mileage of 16 km/litre, depending on the variant and fuel. It is not designed for speed and can go up to 200 km/h, as per estimates.
The car, however, has all the luxuries that can be found on premium SUVs such as wood trim on the dashboard, customisable leather seats, LED-illuminated cup holsters and a large infotainment display among others. The car costs only around USD 140,000.
Mbappe is usually seen in and around a Volkswagen. According to Goal.com, he has at least three Volkswagen four-wheelers.
One of them is the Volkswagen Tiguan, which is powered by a 16-valve, 2.0L, 184-hp turbocharged engine. Equipped with several of Volkswagen’s top-of-the-line car features, the Tiguan has unique driving modes that range from off-road to snow mode.
The all-family car starts at USD 26,950 and can go up to USD 40,000.
Touareg is another Volkswagen car that Mbappe is believed to be owning. Like Taigun, Touareg is also a family car. Named after the nomadic Tuareg people of North Africa, the 2017 model of the luxurious car came with a 3.6-litre VR6 engine delivering 280 horsepower. At the time, the Touareg was priced at USD 49,495 for the V6 Sport equipped with Volkswagen technology.
With up to seven seats and a flexible interior, the USD 67,000 car is a multi-utility vehicle from Volkswagen. It is not clear what model the French forward owns, but as per Volkswagen, the car’s latest version “pays homage to the DNA of its predecessors, dating back to the 1985 Transporter T3.”
Engine options include eHybrid and purely electric apart from conventional petrol and diesel. The electric power provides a maximum range of up to 48 km.
(Main and Featured Images Credits: Courtesy @KMbappe/Twitter)
This story first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Malaysia
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