Kylian Mbappe admits his experience with Chelsea as a youngster helped inspire him to become a great player.
The teenager spoke about his trial at Chelsea when he was aged just 11 when he got the chance to meet both Didier Drogba and Florent Malouda.
He said: ‘It was a wonderful experience. Chelsea was the first great club, the first big club, that I went to visit. So it was a real discovery for me.
‘I was coming from my grassroots, amateur club. It was a whole new world.
‘Of course I had an idea what a great football club was like but I was really impressed by the working culture and the mentality of wanting to be better day-in, day-out and visiting this infrastructure helped me, actually, with my development.
‘I saw things differently because up until then I had just a French mentality and after that I could pick what was positive in other mentalities and build my own.
‘I got to meet some of the first-team players – (Didier) Drogba, (Florent) Malouda – the French-speaking ones and took some pictures with them.’
He added: ‘An idea has been reinforced since I was a kid – not just because I went to Chelsea.
‘I always thought: “I want to be there, I want to be one of those big players who is trying to give people fun out of the game.”
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