France forward Kylian Mbappe missed open training ahead of their World Cup quarter-final clash against England on Saturday. The PSG attacker, who has the most goals in the competition with five, participated in a different rehabilitation session. However, the 23-year-old is a significant concern for England, whose assistant assisted in creating strategies to mute Lionel Messi when Chelsea upset Barcelona in the 2012 Champions League semifinals.
“I believe there are a few players on the earth to whom you should pay particular attention,” England assistant manager Steve Holland said about Kylian Mbappe ahead of their World Cup clash. “Messi was one and likely is one today. Mbappe would have to be included in that kind of group, in my opinion. We must consider how to keep ourselves out of circumstances where he could be as disastrous as we have all witnessed. We need to work to figure out how to prevent that. When (Jose) Mourinho was with Real Madrid and they were facing Barcelona and had (Cristiano) Ronaldo, we recall talking about it long ago. The right-back for Barcelona, (Dani) Alves, would play a soldier against an attacking (flying) Alves in an effort to halt the latter.”
“Then, he would want to play Ronaldo directly against him in a one-on-one situation since Alves was excellent going forward but perhaps not quite as strong defensively,” he added. “Everybody has both a plus and a minus. Yes, we still need to try to deal with him, but if I understand correctly, we also need to work on finding ways to take advantage of the vulnerability that his tremendous strength causes. I believe the challenge is in attempting to adapt your team to cover for that while still trying to generate your own issues.”
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