Bondy is only 10 kilometers from Paris, but there the distance is measured in something else: overdoses on the street, violence that never lets up, homeless neighbors. That is where Kylian Mbappé grew up, and that is where he saw things no child should ever see.
His father had arrived in France as a refugee. In 1990 he met his wife at AS Bondy, the neighborhood club that ended up becoming a refuge for the whole family.
While other boys from the suburb were trapped in that environment, Kylian found a way out: first the flute, under the guidance of his teacher Céline Bognini, and then football, the same sport his father played and later taught as a coach.
Today Mbappé remembers it without filters: “A child should not have to see dead people in the street”.
He does not say it to portray himself as a victim; he says it because the ball got him out of there, and because he never wanted to forget where he comes from or deny what that neighborhood is still suffering.