By now you\u2019ve probably seen the clip on repeat. The moment Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 realized his World Cup dream was slipping away.<\/p>\n
It was the 58th minute when Pedro Porro drove a right-footed shot into the back of the net, giving Spain the second goal in what became a 2-0 semifinal victory over France on Tuesday. Standing nearby, Mbapp\u00e9 watched the sequence unfold. As the ball crossed the line, he flung his left arm into the air, wiped his face with his jersey, then walked back toward midfield.<\/p>\n
One of soccer\u2019s biggest stars and a player capable of changing a game on his own was unable to do so this time. Not against a perfectly organized and disciplined Spanish side that frustrated France at every turn and made the tournament favorite look ordinary.<\/p>\n
Afterward, Mbapp\u00e9 accepted responsibility.<\/p>\n
“You take all the glory when you win and when you don\u2019t win, you have to take the s***,” Mbapp\u00e9 said in all honesty. “It\u2019s part of the game, it\u2019s part of my game, it\u2019s part of my life. And as the captain, I have to take all the responsibility. I have no problem with that. We wanted to go to the final. We didn\u2019t go.”<\/p>\n
(Photo by Hannah Peters – FIFA\/FIFA via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n What does this result \u2014 and France now preparing for the third-place match against England instead of the final against Argentina \u2014 start to say about Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s legacy? That\u2019s a word often thrown around during major tournaments, used as a measuring stick for the world\u2019s greatest players, fairly or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n Entering this summer, France was expected to make a third consecutive run to the final. Les Bleus lifted the trophy in Russia in 2018, Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s World Cup debut. At 19 years old, he scored four goals, including one in the 4-2 victory over Croatia in the final. That made him only the second teenager in history to score in a World Cup final, following Pele in 1958.<\/p>\n Then four years ago, Mbapp\u00e9 raised the bar by scoring eight goals in Qatar, including the historic hat trick that forced Argentina into a penalty shootout in what will likely be remembered as one of the best World Cup finals ever played. Mbapp\u00e9, then 23, won the Golden Boot \u2014 though he accepted the award with a blank expression, devastated that his squad couldn\u2019t pull off the comeback.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s tournament was supposed to be the next step in Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s rise. And things started out that way. The 27-year-old scored eight goals, tying Lionel Messi atop the Golden Boot race. But in Tuesday\u2019s semifinal, he managed just three shots and none on target. He let his frustration boil over when he was shown a yellow card in the 86th minute after he collided with Spanish goalkeeper Unai Simon. Moments later, his free kick from outside the box soared over the crossbar.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen Mbapp\u00e9 single-handedly rescue France. But Spain was superior.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a team that loves to have control of the game, to have control of the ball, and that\u2019s what we let them do,” Mbapp\u00e9, dejected, said after the match. “It\u2019s difficult when you don\u2019t change the play of Spain.”<\/p>\n Mbapp\u00e9 is sitting on 20 goals across three World Cups, only behind Messi\u2019s leading 21. He will undoubtedly shatter that record by playing in two or three more World Cups.<\/p>\n Even so, in the immediate aftermath of this defeat, the conversation around him has changed. He looked like the clear successor to Messi \u2014 and to be clear, he still can be. The two found themselves on opposite ends of the 2022 final where they traded spellbinding moments in a performance that simultaneously felt like the continuation of a rivalry and the passing of the torch.<\/p>\n (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY By now you\u2019ve probably seen the clip on repeat. The moment Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 realized his World Cup dream was slipping away. It was the 58th minute when Pedro Porro drove a right-footed shot into the back of the net, giving Spain the second goal in what became a 2-0 semifinal victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}