There’s another Mbappe on the scene! But, who is Ethan Mbappe?
We’ve already seen one dominating the sport, but are we about to see a second Mbappe at football’s summit?
Everyone, even non-football fans, are familiar with Kylian Mbappe. Why wouldn’t they be? To steal Micah Richards’ words, he burst onto the scene. Still in his teens, he won a Ligue 1 title at Monaco and was central to his side’s 2016-17 Champions League semi-final run.
Bigger cities and brighter lights soon followed. In the summer of 2017, Parisian juggernauts PSG acquired a still-teenage Mbappe for 180 million euros, a world record fee for a teenager and the second-highest figure ever paid.
He won a World Cup in 2018, made another final in 2022, where he became the first man since 1966 to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final and the first to do so in a losing side, and has been a fear-inducing prospect for any opposition since emerging.
And now, there’s another one.
With barely any time left on the clock in PSG’s emphatic 3-1 victory over FC Metz on 21 December 2023, Kylian’s younger brother Ethan Mbappe made his way onto the Parc des Princes pitch for Manuel Ugarte.
In doing so, we added yet another footballing brother duo to go with the Ferdinand’s, the Neville’s, and the Bellingham’s.
But who exactly is Ethan Mbappe? And should world football be as ‘worried’ about him as they are about his older brother?
Everything you need to know about Ethan Mbappe
Age
Anyone born in the 1990s or earlier might be sick to think about it, but Ethan Mbappe was born on 29 December 2006. He made his debut for PSG at 16, barely a week shy of his 17th birthday.
To put it into context, when Ethan Mbappe was born, Steve Irwin had passed away a few months earlier, Rafael Nadal only had two tennis Grand Slams, and Lebron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi were still only kids — far, far away from the all-time greats they are now.
These kids today, man.
Position
At the sight of a second Mbappe jogging onto a Parisian pitch, defenders everywhere’s chests would’ve tightened, sweat would’ve dripped from their brows onto their couch, and they’d have fired warning messages to their peers.
‘Mayday, mayday: There’s another Mbappe!”
They can rest a little easier. Ethan Mbappe, unlike his brother, isn’t a frightening, lights-out attacker with the speed of Max Verstappen’s F1 car and a change of direction only rivalled by slalom skiers.
No, thankfully for their sake, the younger Mbappe is a central midfielder.
Playstyle
While Kylian Mbappe might’ve been, very few young footballers are the final product in their teenage years. Scott McTominay was once a striker and Gareth Bale came through as a left-back.
There’s still mountains of physical filling out and mental maturation to happen too. For this reason, it’s very hard to accurately gauge the type of player the kid will become.
But what we do know about the younger Mbappe is this: he’s a central midfielder, he’s technical and diminutive, and he has a knack for finding the back of the net — it might be in the blood.
He has four goals this season in the Championnat National U19, France’s premier under-19s football competition, for a PSG side sitting second with 40 goals to their name.
Naturally, there isn’t a library of data that exists on the division. But from the few clips available, we can see the younger Mbappe’s elegance as he ghosts late into the box and calmly finishes with his left foot.
To get a further sense of the kind of technical ability Ethan Mbappe possesses we can look back to PSG’s 2023-24 pre-season friendlies, where he got his first taste of first-team football.
In just over an hour against Jeonbuk Hyundai, he had 65 touches, made one key pass, and lost possession 12 times; pretty stock standard for a kid of his age in a meaningless friendly.
His PSG under-19s coach, Zoumana Camara, praised baby Mbappe as a player who ‘works really hard, with lots of energy and quality on the ball.’
‘Sometimes he’s too aggressive; he needs to learn to control that.’
Similarly, Luis Enrique, the PSG head coach who gave him his professional debut noted that while his brother might have one eye on the exit; ‘Ethan is clearly the future of the club.’
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While admitting he ‘is not yet ready physically,’ Enquire, a former midfielder himself, praised his ‘great qualities and great visitation of the game.’
‘He is very intelligent when he plays with others.’
While he mightn’t be the silky goalscoring juggernaut older brother Kylian is, it is very clear that with Ethan’s growth European football isn’t getting any Mbappe reprieve anytime soon.
