Mbappé and the Ceuta shirt: the National Rally attacks the Real Madrid player

Kylian Mbappé is at the center of a Franco-Spanish controversy after partially wearing a shirt of support for residents of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Tuesday evening, before Real Madrid’s match against Elche. The gesture, immediately noticed, triggered fierce controversy on both sides of the Pyrenees.

Faced with interpretations, the French striker chose to explain himself in the columns of Spanish daily AS. “First, I want to express my full solidarity with Ceuta and all the victims,” he said. “But I also wanted to make a gesture and show my sympathy for all migrants who have lost their lives and those who still live in difficult conditions. One might think I am against the residents of Ceuta, but no, absolutely not. I do not want to establish a hierarchy of suffering.”

This clarification was not enough to extinguish the political fire. In the midst of the French presidential campaign, several National Rally figures seized on the issue. Eure National Rally deputy Kévin Mauvieux wrote on social media: “If shame had a face, it would be Kylian Mbappé’s.” Party spokesman Julien Odoul described Mbappé’s and his teammate Ibrahima Konaté’s behavior as “lamentable and disrespectful to the suffering of Ceuta’s residents.”

Attacks also came from the highest levels of the far-right. Marion Maréchal, a rising figure in Marine Le Pen’s campaign, also judged the gesture “shameful,” publicly questioning the player’s motivations: “Why this contempt? Why do they feel solidarity with all the world’s suffering, but never with that of Europeans?”

This episode is part of a long series of frictions between the France team captain and the French far-right political scene, which has only intensified in recent years.