It hasn’t been the best few months for Kylian Mbappé.
The French superstar striker entered the 2026 World Cup with his team as clear favorites to win the tournament, only to come up well short, losing 2-0 to Spain in the semifinals. Then, on Monday night, he lost the Ballon d’Or, the award given out to the best player in international soccer, to Harry Kane.
Though Mbappé was brilliant in the “El Classico” against Barcelona, scoring a brace in the rivalry match, through the first 10 matches of the La Liga season, Real Madrid’s goal differential of +15 pales in comparison to Barca’s +29. He also refused to fully wear a shirt worn by the rest of his teammates, to reaffirm Cueta’s status as a part of Spain after an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration from Morocco.
But on Tuesday, his season somehow got even worse.
Mbappé bent the knee to China and the Chinese Communist Party, after an appearance on “The Bridge,” a French talk show hosted by a teammate, Aurelien Tchouameni. His big offense? Laughing at a meme.
The one “that makes me laugh the most,” he said, is “the one where there’s a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator, they put my [face over it]. The show then cut to an example of the meme, his face covering an image of what looks to be Mao Zedong.
Mao was, by any reasonable definition, a dictator. And a brutal, malicious, and violent one. Most historians blame Mao’s policies for tens of millions of deaths through famine and politically motivated persecution. It’s not a stretch to describe him as evil, and one of history’s greatest villains.
But in the modern world of professional sports, there are a few protected groups that must be protected at all costs, and the Chinese Communist Party is one of them. Why? Because there’s money to be made for La Liga and Real Madrid in China, and telling the truth about the CCP’s abuses is apparently forbidden.
“My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world,” Mbappé wrote in a humiliating statement on Tuesday. “I apologize to everyone my words have upset. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”
If that wasn’t enough, the entire Spanish soccer league added their own groveling, ridiculous apology.
“La Liga deeply regrets the offense caused by Kylian Mbappés recent comments among Chinese fans. These comments were made in a personal capacity and do not represent LALIGA. To the extent of our institutional responsibility, we apologize on behalf of LALIGA and all its clubs,” the league said.
He’s just the latest in a long list of athletes and personalities whose concern for human rights and social justice ends at the Chinese border. And OutKick’s Dan Dakich took him to task for how he handled it.
“I don’t think people fully understand soccer is, and how big soccer players like Mbappé are, all across the wo
