Robin Van Persie left Manchester United in 2015 to join Fenerbahçe. That summer the Turkish club traveled to Switzerland to play a friendly against Monaco. That meeting served to meet in first person a boy from whom I had already received very good references: Kylian Mbappé. The Dutch striker was worth a few minutes to bet on the French. “I looked at him and said to everyone else on the bench: 'If this kid doesn't become a world star, I'll eat the football boots I'm wearing,'” he recounts in The Sun.
Van Persie remembers that friendly match against Monaco in Lausanne perfectly: “The club had organized a friendly match against Monaco. I knew I was going to play 70 minutes and just before they replaced me, a very young boy came in for Monaco. His name was Mbappé and in Europe no one had heard of him yet. We, as players, yes we had heard, while we were in switzerland, that Monaco had a special player on the bench for his match against us. “
The Dutch striker admits that he fell in love with that young Frenchman who was 16 years old at the time: “We played on a very mediocre field of a local amateur club. He only played 20 minutes, but in that short time he was incredibly explosive, very skilled. I decided to watch his every move. It was really something of another level. “Two years later PSG paid 180 million to Monaco for him.