Kylian Mbappe sat in The Bridge alongside Achraf Hakimi, Tchouameni and comedian Malik Bentalha and spoke for a long time without the usual shield of press conferences. He explained it himself: "I'm tired of interviews. The journalist is there to make you say what you don't want to say, and you don't want to say what he wants you to say. It's like a boxing match".

He also did so when talking about his defensive side, one of the criticisms that has accompanied him most since he arrived at Madrid. "I'm a player who defends a little less than the others, and sometimes that can be a problem," he said. "It's true that I do it less, but I notice that when I do it, it really impacts the team. At Madrid, when I do it, you can see that everyone else does it too." He added: "They criticize me for that, and it doesn't bother me, because it's constructive criticism."

There was also room for Gvardiol and that celebration that went around the world. "It started in the first leg. It was on a counter-attack, he tackled me and shouted 'Yeah!' I don't forget things," he said. And for the 2022 World Cup, where he and Hakimi experienced a peculiar situation. "We played Football Manager together and called each other every day. The further we went, the more we realised we could face each other. He would say to me 'we're going through' and I would say 'so are we'. But in the semi-finals there was no more going through. We kept talking, but with a 'hmmm' in the air."

The most light-hearted moment came with the story of the driving licence, which brought him a "A" for novice, the French equivalent of the Spanish "L". Mbappe wanted to get it in Paris but it was too complicated. In Madrid they found a way to do it anonymously, in a kind of private session. Tchouameni was quick to point out, ironically, the reason for the pass: "He paid. Because he paid." The examiner, to make matters worse, was an Atletico fan. "When you drive well, you have to be approved," said Mbappe

He also admitted that one day he failed to park while being filmed with the Mini Cooper. "When you're being filmed, you get a little nervous," he said. To top it all off, when he left the hotel there were 1,000 people, a car blocked his way out and everyone was filming him trying to recognize him. He wore a cap so that his emotions could not be seen.