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Kylian Mbappe might be a PSG player now, but the former Monaco star still remembers how it all started for him during his short stint at Chelsea.
The 18-year-old joined the French giants on loan for the remainder of the season from Monaco, with a £166m option to buy at the end of the season, and he has admitted that his Chelsea experience helped his career.
As an 11-year-old, Mbappe had a brief stint in west London alongside the likes of Tammy Abraham and Jeremie Boga.
“It was a wonderful experience,” he told The Telegraph. “Chelsea was the first great club, the first big club, that I went to visit. So it was a real discovery for me.
“I was coming from my grassroots, amateur club. It was a whole new world. Of course I had an idea what a great football club was like but I was really impressed by the working culture and the mentality of wanting to be better day-in, day-out.
“And visiting this infrastructure helped me, actually, with my development. I saw things differently because up until then I had just a French mentality and after that I could pick what was positive in other mentalities and build my own.”
He added: “An idea has been reinforced since I was a kid – not just because I went to Chelsea. I always thought: ‘I want to be there, I want to be one of those big players who is trying to give people fun out of the game’. And I have given everything to reach that objective. Now I am on the other side of the camera, on the other side of the TV. That’s the only difference.”