Project Mbappe - the road to becoming France's record scorer

Mbappe and, significantly, his entire family, have always had it in their mind they wanted the striker to reach the top of the global game. And so 'Project Mbappe' was born. "Kylian was just school and football," says childhood friend Rayan Viyanga in a BBC Sport documentary called Mbappe. "School, football, home." He was born on the outskirts of Paris in the suburb of Bondy in 1998, just five months after France won the World Cup for the first time. The family flat overlooked the AS Bondy football pitches, where his father Wilfried was a player turned coach. "Kylian was already one step ahead of many other players at AS Bondy," Viyanga said. "He was advanced for his age group and wanted to play with the best. That was a strict rule of his, to play with the best." Laurens added: "As a kid, he learned La Marseillaise at the age of three just to be ready to sing it when that first cap would come." Mbappe - whose mother Fayza Lamari is a former professional handball player - pinned up pictures of idol Cristiano Ronaldo and watched old footage of Zidane, another Real Madrid superstar. A bigger influence closer to home though was Jires Kembo Ekoko, his adopted brother, who was selected for the French Federation's national academy at Clairefontaine years before Mbappe himself went there. Ekoko went on to play for Rennes in Ligue 1. Matt Spiro, an author and French football expert, told BBC Sport: "Kylian initially found it a bit difficult at Clairefontaine. …