Mbappe v Walker: Tanks, soldiers and why Pochettino says it's not a one-on-one battle (2024)

Kylian Mbappe knows how fast Kyle Walker is, too.

When Walker gave his press conference on Wednesday, there were plenty of questions about Mbappe and how he planned to shackle him. “I do understand what I need to do,” Walker said, “and that is to stop him.” Walker did then admit this was “easier said than done”.

Mbappe has not spoken this week, but he has already made his respect for Walker’s speed very clear. In an interview Mbappe gave to France Football in 2021, he discussed what he called ultra-rapides players. He started with Rennes defender Jeremy Doku, the fastest player he had seen in his career. He mentioned Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Neymar before his injuries. Then he mentions another category of player, “less explosive when he starts to run”. And that is how he sees Walker: “He is like a tank that gains speed once launched.”

The duel in the desert between Mbappe and Walker has been billed as the battle that will decide the World Cup quarter-final. And maybe it is. Mbappe has been the top scorer at this World Cup so far and has been playing even better than he did in Russia four years ago. He is — and we are not treading new ground here — not just a brilliant footballer but also devastatingly quick. There are not many defenders who can keep up with Mbappe at top speed. But one of them — as Mbappe has hinted at himself — is Walker.

When France played Poland, Mbappe hit a top speed of 35.3km/h, even quicker than Ousmane Dembele (top speed 35km/h), and one of the top speeds hit by anyone this tournament. But in England’s last-16 game against Senegal, Walker was England’s fastest player with 34.4km/h (ahead of Bukayo Saka on 33.2km/h). If anyone in the England squad can do it, it is Walker.

John Stones knows how valuable Walker’s pace is in helping to defend against players running in behind and giving the rest of the defence the confidence to push higher up the pitch.

“It’s a great attribute he’s got and definitely that’s what makes a team,” Stones said last week. “In certain situations, we rely on Kyle to get us out of a bad situation. Players try to play to our strengths and during the week work on our weaknesses, it’s a great strength as a team that Kyle is back feeling great, feeling fit. For us as England to use that at both ends of the pitch, forward and back, his physicality as a player is the best I’ve seen.”

Also on Walker’s side is the fact he has played well against Mbappe in the past, in three Champions League games between Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain in 2021.

In the game on 28 April 2021, you can see Walker keeping pace with Mbappe as the PSG man tries to break down the left.

On this occasion, he was able to dispossess Mbappe after he caught up to him.

In a second example, Walker intelligently cuts off Neymar’s passing lane to Mbappe initially.

The pass is delayed and Mbappe checked his run, which allowed Walker to recover his defensive position using his speed and hold Mbappe up…

… to allow reinforcements to arrive.

So if Walker can replicate this on Saturday night, England will be in pretty good shape. But ultimately there is more to defending against Mbappe than just keeping pace with him.

Mauricio Pochettino coached Walker for three years at Tottenham and Mbappe for 18 months at PSG, and his view is that it is too simplistic to reduce the contest to the battle between the two players. “It’s not only about the characteristics of Kyle Walker,” Pochettino explains. “Kylian is very difficult to stop one-v-one because of how fast he is. It’s not easy.”

Pochettino’s view is that teams have to try to keep the ball away from Mbappe altogether. And, if that is not possible, to have two players close to him rather than one.

“I don’t want to advise the coach because I have massive respect for all the coaches,” Pochettino says. “This is only from my knowledge of Kylian. He is a player that you need to isolate and put in the areas far from the box. Because when he is in the box, he is so dangerous. And I think that you always need two players: one, then another supporting to anticipate if possible. If you cannot anticipate, you need to be close to him because he is always going to try to pin you or try to beat you. And then inside the box, he is going to be dangerous.”

“So it’s about trying to stop him before he arrives in the final third. It’s not easy. He has the capacity to twist and double. And when he identifies the possibility to shoot, he is really, really dangerous.”

Walker has also had some success taking an aggressive stance against Mbappe and trying to take the ball off him, not giving him time to turn, as you can see from the example below where the England right-back is aggressive, beating Mbappe to the ball and starting a Manchester City attack that led to Keylor Navas saving a Phil Foden effort.

So one idea would be to cut off the supply line to Mbappe. If England can stop the ball at source from reaching him, then that will solve the problem before it has even emerged.

Another idea would be to take advantage of the fact Mbappe does not like to defend. England assistant manager Steve Holland referred to this earlier this week when he discussed the “cat and mouse” situation of trying to turn Mbappe’s strength into a weakness. Holland referred to a conversation he had with Jose Mourinho about when he was at Real Madrid and whether the best way to combat Barcelona right-back Dani Alves was with a “soldier” to defend diligently, or with Cristiano Ronaldo, to give Alves something to worry about at the other end of the pitch. “We have still got to try to deal with him,” Holland said. “But we also have to try to exploit the weakness that his super-strength delivers”.

Mbappe’s reluctance to defend is known in coaching as “cheating”, but it is a clever form of cheating. If the opposition are progressing the ball on the opposite side to Mbappe, he is never exactly in a rush to drop back to get in line with the rest of the French midfield. He would rather stay high so he can be a threat on the break if France can get the ball back up to him. Equally, this means that if he is not helping out defensively, France’s left-back is likely to get overwhelmed.

The challenge is to attack the France left-back in such a way that it forces Mbappe to get back and defend. (As Holland put it, to put Ronaldo up against Dani Alves.) The more energy Mbappe spends defending, the fewer high-intensity sprints he can do going forward. England would be making France choose to compromise a strength to cover for a weakness.

But how do England do this? One option would be to play an attacking right-winger, such as Bukayo Saka, to put pressure behind Mbappe. Southgate will know that France’s best work comes out wide, with Mbappe on one side and Ousmane Dembele on the other, and they will have to find a way to defend both.

The main tactical debate going into the game concerns whether Southgate will switch to a back five system for France. That is what he did when England faced Germany and Italy at Euro 2020. But so far at this tournament, he has been loyal to the back four system. That way Southgate could have Kieran Trippier at right wing-back, giving him a second player to try to combat Mbappe. (And if he went for a shape like a 5-4-1 he could have Saka on the right of midfield, effectively giving him a third player to combat Mbappe.)

But another question is whether Southgate would want to cede that psychological advantage by switching to a back three system. Because if England played Trippier at right wing-back and he was pinned back into the defensive line by the French threat, then England could struggle to get momentum in the game.

“Gareth will be thinking and talking to Steve Holland and the coaching staff about what they think the pros and cons would be around that,” says Les Reed, FA technical director from 2019 to 2021. “They will all have different views. ‘If we do this, this will happen. If we don’t do that, this will happen’. Gareth is very good at doing that brainstorming. I think he will be considering it. But I think they’ll look very carefully at the momentum. It might be a change too far.”

“Unless in the build-up to the game something tells him that we need to treat this game differently, which could be: ‘Let’s be unpredictable against the French’. My only feeling would be, what could go through his mind, it’s: ‘if I make that change, will it signal to the French that we are scared of them because we want to go ultra-cautious with five at the back?’ It’s a very difficult call. And he has done it before. But I think it might just be one too far if he changes what’s been successful up until now.”

(Other contributors: Andrew Jones and Stuart James)