SportsMbappé’s China faux pas: When sports collide with geopolitics

François Picard speaks with Luxembourg-based French-Serbian sports writer and analyst Igor Mladenovic about the backlash in China to Kylian Mbappé’s playful reference to a meme portraying him as Mao Zedong. Mladenovic says the episode shows how an apparently harmless anecdote by a football star can spiral into a geopolitical firestorm in the digital age.

MbappéChinafootballgeopolitics

FFrance 24★★☆☆☆2026-10-28 12:20Original